OCR software recommendations Thread poster: Fiona Grace Peterson
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I am currently looking to invest in OCR software and wondered what you recommend? I know that ABBYY Finereader is generally considered the best OCR tool out there - would you agree, or are there others which perform similarly well?
Also if anyone has any recent experience with open source programmes, I would love to hear your input.
Thanks in advance for any replies.
| | | | 2nl (X) 
Netherlands
Local time: 20:48
| Free solutions | Dec 20, 2015 |
TM-Town and Wordfast Anywhere can OCR your texts for free. Wait a moment, SmartCat (Abbyy) offers this service too. You'll have to download an intermediate format like XLIFF to translate in your own tool.
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:48
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| Look at Omnipage | Dec 20, 2015 |
Fiona Grace Peterson wrote:
I know that ABBYY Finereader is generally considered the best OCR tool out there - would you agree, or are there others which perform similarly well?
I have been surprised that so many people use FineReader as Omnipage (I own Omnipage 18) is the big old grandaddy of the industry, which I think has been around for a couple of decades now.
Given that so many people seem to like FineReader, for a while I ran Omnipage and the trial version of Abbyy FineReader in tandem to see if I was missing anything.
I found that Ominpage did a consistently better job of OCR'ing Japanese text than FineReader. FineReader would sometimes do a better job on some areas of a document than Omnipage, but overall I found Omnipage made fewer mistakes, though the difference was not large.
Some caveats:
- Omnipage seems to me to offer significantly more power - all kinds of custom zoning, templates, batch processing and so on - but also seems significantly more complex. I use it only occasionally and to master it I would have to sit down for a couple of days and really learn how to use it. FineReader appeared much simpler, but less ultimately capable.
- I have only tested with Japanese and English. Your results with other scripts and languages may vary.
Regards
Dan
| | | | | Depends on the languages | Dec 21, 2015 |
It really depends on the languages.
In my case, although I translate less from Thai to English, and more from English to Thai, I think having an OCR tool that can OCR Thai is better.
Abbyy Finereader, Abbyy Transformer+, and Foxit PhantomPDF (Abbyy's engine too, if I'm not wrong) are the only options for me. Omnipage cannot OCR Thai.
However, in my opinion, Thai OCR results are still bad, and hiring a typist is better in some cases.
In the end, I choose Abbyy Tra... See more It really depends on the languages.
In my case, although I translate less from Thai to English, and more from English to Thai, I think having an OCR tool that can OCR Thai is better.
Abbyy Finereader, Abbyy Transformer+, and Foxit PhantomPDF (Abbyy's engine too, if I'm not wrong) are the only options for me. Omnipage cannot OCR Thai.
However, in my opinion, Thai OCR results are still bad, and hiring a typist is better in some cases.
In the end, I choose Abbyy Transformer+, because I want it to do other things rather than OCR too (e.g. e-signing, editing, and so on).
These days I OCR Thai texts just to have a word count estimate.
If the source text is in English, I will use either Abbyy Transformer+ or Solid Converter, which I have free access via Trados Studio 2015.
Talking about English OCR/PDF conversion to Word, I tried some PDF and OCR tools, and in my opinion, I like the results from Omnipage (and Nuance Power PDF, they're from the same company) and Solid Converter.
So if Omnipage (or Nuance Power PDF) and Solid Converter support your languages, you may want to try them whether they provide better results than Abbyy.
Kamonchanok
[Edited at 2015-12-21 09:09 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Ben Senior
Germany
Local time: 20:48
German to English
I'm with Dan on this one. I too have OmniPage 18 and I am very pleased with it. I had a job in recently with over 50 scanned documents, some up to more than 30 pages, and some were pretty poor quality with small font sizes. OmniPage managed to do a good job on all of the files and I did very little editing before working on the *.docx files in Studio 2015. Of the two versions available I found the normal version more than adequate for my work. It cost €85 which is soon returned just by the min... See more I'm with Dan on this one. I too have OmniPage 18 and I am very pleased with it. I had a job in recently with over 50 scanned documents, some up to more than 30 pages, and some were pretty poor quality with small font sizes. OmniPage managed to do a good job on all of the files and I did very little editing before working on the *.docx files in Studio 2015. Of the two versions available I found the normal version more than adequate for my work. It cost €85 which is soon returned just by the minimal amount of post editing.
Get the trial version and test it. Look out for special offers too.
Ben ▲ Collapse
| | | | Platary (X)
Local time: 20:48
German to French
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| Roy Oestensen
Denmark
Local time: 20:48
Member (2010)
English to Norwegian (Bokmal)
+ ...
| Have not tried Omnipage recently | Oct 6, 2017 |
Fiona Grace Peterson wrote:
I am currently looking to invest in OCR software and wondered what you recommend? I know that ABBYY Finereader is generally considered the best OCR tool out there - would you agree, or are there others which perform similarly well?
I started out with Omnipage, but when Abbyy came around I found it, in general, did a better job, as long as I chose a manual setup rather than an automatic one. Using an automatic option usually means garbage is included, and that is regardless of which program I try.
So I have found Abbyy a better solution for my purposes, but things change, so it may be if I tried the latest versions, I might change my mind.
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