The trouble with OmniPage (and all OCR software really) is that it just isn't accurate enough. If it is 99% accurate (and it isn't unless you have a scanner that makes perfect copies of ideal fonts) then there will be 1% error rate - that is roughly a wrong character on every line in a document - by the time you manually edit the errors out for a fast typer it probably would be quicker to have retyped the text in the first place.-Carol Haynes
You obviously have never seen me type, Carol!!
Plus, I am losing the use of my left arm/hand more and more as time passes, so I have to use Dragon Naturally Speaking Pro version for any significant inout. That is - I still type out most of these posts, though you will see lots of typos, mostly on the left-hand side of the keyboard. But for Word documents I dictate all input. Believe me, the error rate I have to correct after dictating (I am getting >98% accuracy with standard stuff) will make a 1% OCR error rate look easy!)
The other, and biggest problem, is formatting - one of the reason's I got interested in OmniPage (back in version 10/11 days, I forget which) they pushed the idea of maintaining formatting and outputting perfectly formed Word documents. This never worked (even on simple documents) and one of the reasons I demanded a refund on version 15 was that it had got no better. My experience was documents full of OCR errors - formatting pretty much all over the place and new styles created for practically every line of text which meant the only way to edit the file was to go through and change all the styles.
Formatted output never worked at all in my experience in automatic mode - you had to spend time telling it which parts of the page were text and graphics by drawing different colour boxes. The auto correction (using a dictionary) was a joke as half the time it OCRed text so badly it couldn't make an intelligent guess.
Sorry - but if others are reading this thread they shouldn't be led into thinking OmniPage is a good solution for all OCR needs. It claims to be be the industry leader and of professional standard but the latter at least is just not true.
Anyone interested in this sort of software should try the demo version first and make sure they are happy with what it does. Also try out the opposition before comitting good money to OmniPage!
If you want to 'read' PDF files then Adobe do a free plugin with Adobe Acrobat (not sure if it works with the free reader version - but it works well with the full version).
Also if you have Microsoft Office it has rudimentary OCR capability that may be enough for your needs. See http://office.micros...x?pid=CL100636481033
That does stink - the formatting errors. Currently I have the latest version of ReadIRIS, which does OCR great in my opinion. But that ius all it does - OCR. My understanding of Omnipage and PaperPort together -- at least from Nuance's literature -- is that I can grab documents all over my PC, put them into an easily stored and retrieved format, and then organize them. I am guessing it is like a database-type organization. That sounds inviting to me, as with three internal drives of 80 GB, 500 GB, and 500 GB, I have a lot of docs spread all over!
Omnipage's putting all into one format is simple PDF conversion, I imagine. If it does not do that well I have three or four other ways to accomplish that. And I probably could do what PaperPort says it does with a lot of forethought and MS Access, which I have as part of Office 2003. But I have NEVER been able to get Access to work well. That is particularly frustrating because I used to do wonders with dBase III+ many years ago. But Access just makes me think I have it all done right. That is until I pull it up later and try to extract what I put into it! Then I realize I have no clue as to what it is doing!!
At $99, it is very tempting to give it a try. I know that $99 "ain't hay" as they say. (Hmmm.. WHO says that?) But after all it IS about $700 of software - I know that some have paid close to $500 for OmniPage Pro alone. Decisions, decisions...
