Hallelujah - Scanning Functionality

[cthorpe]

Didn't want this to get lost in the other thread with all that serious discussion...

I usually hate having to do scans, since it means running the software that came with the scanner.  It takes forever to load, even longer to scan, and requires about 5 steps to get each scan from the bed to a usable file.  It's annoying, slow, and painful.  Of course, I know how to do it, and its what I've been using for nearly 2 years.  Occasionally I'll try something else which claims to be better, and I get frustrated because I don't know the program and give up.  I rarely fire up the scanner, so it's too much trouble to learn a new program.

Yesterday, I found myself needing to scan some receipts for insurance purposes.  Since I have some free time these days (teacher + summer = nice), I decided to try a new program.  Lo and behold, Screenshot Captor now has scanning functionality.  Now, I will admit, sheepishly, that I am a SnagIt user.  It's hard not to be when you have legal access to a SnagIt/Camtasia bundled license for less than $50  So I loaded up Screenshot Captor, and got ready to learn how to do scanning with a new program.  10 minutes in, I hadn't figured it out.  Then I decided to RTFM, and realized that I needed to turn on scanning in the options.  Less than 5 minutes later, I had my first scan completed.  Then another.  Then a third, and suddenly visions of a paperless office began dancing in my head.  SC was fast and easy.  Two clicks and I had an image I could be proud of.  Ten minutes later I was done with the insurance documents.

Did I stop there?  No!  I grabbed a stack of photographs (yeah, I know, who uses film anymore?) and started scanning.  SC seemed to get better images without any tweaking than my old scanner software did after fiddling with sliders and dials for an hour.  Before I knew it wedding pictures, teaching certificates, medical records, and notes had all been scanned.  A quick add of an external tool, and now even my text scans can be sent over to OmniPage with just a flick of my wrist and a click of my finger!

Needless to say, I have replaced the bloated, slow software that came with my scanner, and now I am a SC user.

Three cheers for mouser!

Hip, Hip, Hooray!

Hip, Hip, Hooray!

Hip, Hip, Hooray!

[mouser]

Thanks Carl, that made my day.

[lanux128]

that's nice to hear, cthorpe.. though, i'm surprised that it took SC this long to convince you to change.

just curious about the text scans that are sent to OmniPage, how do you do that? i have OmniPage too but it's unable to recognize documents scanned by SC.

[cthorpe]

I set up OmniPage like so...



then Add... and



The Program line points to OmniPage17.exe

On the parameters line, I had to put the " " around %file% (mouser, the program says it will add those if necessary, but it didn't).

Then, all I need to do is scan the image, and click OmniPage to send the image to OCR.

[lanux128]

thanks for the info.. adding OmniPage into the tools menu.

[mouser]

someone make an .sctool for it then others can just download it and put it in their tools directory without having to add it manually.

[lanux128]

since there are several different versions of OmniPage plus the name-change of the developers (ScanSoft to Nuance), i'd like to request users of OmniPage here in DC to post the path to OmniPage.exe on their PC so that i can make a .sctool file as suggested by mouser.

[cthorpe]

Running OmniPage 17 Professional here:

"C:\Program Files\Nuance\OmniPage17\OmniPage17.exe"

[Carol Haynes]

Sorry my soultion is to use my Canon MX850 All-in-one network printer. Press scan on the machine and choose the machine on the network where you want the scans to go from a list and the application you want them to open in. Then press the green button for colour and grey button for greyscale. Just stick all you scans on one by one (or even use the sheet feeder) and press the grey/green button and when you get back to the computer they are all on screen in the application you selected.

Absolutely brilliant.

For those without such a nice setup SC will do a great job.