Advanced OCR with OmniPage and FineReader

1. Advanced OCRwith OmniPage and FineReader

2. Overview • Optical character recognition • Structural recognition • Options • Loading • Zoning • OCR • Editing

3. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) • OCR turns pictures of text into e-text • Does well unless… • The picture is fuzzy • The contrast is poor • The font is unusual • The font is too small or too large • The material has unusual characters

4. Structural Recognition • Analyzes the layout of the page • Columns • Headings • Graphics • Tables • Usually does fairly well, unless the layout is non-standard

5. Programs that Run OCR • Programs for consumers • Kurzweil 1000, 3000 • OpenBook • Intel Reader • Many others… • Programs for production • ABBYY FineReader • Nuance OmniPage

6. Consumer Programs • Highly automated • Designed for individuals who have print disabilities • Are not good production tools • Do not provide flexibility • Do not allow much overriding • Interfaces not designed for editing

7. Production Programs in General • A good program for production allows you to… • Control the zones (areas or blocks of text and graphics) • Add, delete, change • Edit easily • Improve recognition

8. Preferred Programs • ABBYY FineReader • Relatively easy to learn • Fairly intuitive • Good structural recognition • Nuance OmniPage • Less intuitive but more accessible • Often does better with technical materials

9. Both Good Tools • If you can afford to have both, it’s nice, but not absolutely necessary. • If you have both, run a couple test pages through each to see which is doing better on a particular job.

10. Under the Hood • For best results with a program, set up your options before you begin! • Tools > Options

11. Lots of Languages • FineReader and OmniPage handle multiple languages. • For foreign language, turn on all the languages in the book. • It will recognize the diacritical marks. • Turn on what you need, but only what you need.

12. Math • If you are running OCR on math, try turning on Greek. • Greek will allow the program to recognize alphas, deltas, sigmas, etc.

13. Another Decision • Detect page orientation or not? • Does not always get it right • Try it if you have many pages turned

14. Considerations • You may or may not want to keep headers and footers. • I generally keep them to pull the page numbers. • You may want to keep the page breaks. • Retaining page breaks helps to maintain one-to-one page correspondence with the book.

15. Fitting Everything • In some cases, you may need to work with a custom paper size to fit everything onto one page. • This feature can be helpful when you are retaining everything on the page but not the layout.

16. Loading Files • “Open” • Opens saved program files • “Load” • Loads image files to process • Note that this same issue comes up with saving!

17. Wizards Are Evil… • Do not rely on the automation • Load the image file and choose the processes you want

18. Workspace • The program has three primary areas • Pages Pane • Either thumbnails or details • Allows simple navigation of pages • Image Pane • Your graphic • Text Pane • Area where the text from OCR will show

19. More Accessible • Both programs have a detail view. • Shows text instead of graphics • Detail view is more accessible for screen readers. • Otherwise, it is personal preference.

20. Two Ways to Save • To Save the program file to access later in the OCR program, choose File > Save • This saves your work file. • You save your converted file during the last phase of the processing.

21. Production Tips • Work with dual monitors • Check your computer and video card • Stretching an OCR program across two monitors is a HUGE time-saver! • Learn to use keyboard shortcuts. • They save tons of time!