OmniWare Pro 12 ScanSoft What is optical character recognition, OmniPage Pro’s OCR capabilities

Page 20

What is optical character recognition

Optical character recognition is the process of extracting text from an image. This image can result from scanning a paper document or opening an electronic image file. Images do not have editable text characters; they have many tiny dots (pixels) that together form character shapes. These present a picture of the text on a page.

During OCR, OmniPage Pro 12 analyzes the character shapes in an image and defines solutions to produce editable text. After OCR, you can save the resulting text to a variety of word-processing, desktop publishing or spreadsheet applications.

OmniPage Pro’s OCR capabilities

In addition to text recognition, OmniPage Pro can retain the following elements of a document through the OCR process.

Graphics

Photos, logos, and drawings are examples of graphics.

Text formatting

Font types, sizes and styles (such as bold, italic and underlines) are examples of character formatting. Indents, tabs, margins and line spacing are examples of paragraph formatting.

Page formatting

Column structure, table formats, and placement of graphics and headings are examples of page formatting.

The graphics, text and page formatting elements that OmniPage Pro retains are determined by the settings you select. Refer to the Settings Guidelines in the online Help for more information about selecting settings.

OmniPage Pro only recognizes machine-generated characters such as offset or laser-printed or typewritten text. However, it can retain handwritten text, such as a signature, as a graphic.

20Introduction

Image 20

Contents Page G a L N O T I C E S N T E N T S O C E S S I N G D O C U M E N T S O O F I N G a N D E D I T I N G D E Scanning and other information This User’s Guide Online HelpReadme File Using this Guide BoldContext-Sensitive Help Getting online HelpOnline Html Help Tech Notes Glossary Installation and setup System requirements To install OmniPage Pro Installing OmniPage ProBefore installing OmniPage Pro Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro How to start the program New features in OmniPage Pro Registering your software Dramatic increase in accuracy Streamlined interfaceBetter proofing and verifying Formatting levels for display and savingSuperior page analysis Advanced saving optionsIntroduction What is optical character recognition OmniPage Pro’s OCR capabilitiesGraphics Text formattingDocuments in OmniPage Pro Basic processing stepsBring a set of images into OmniPage Pro Perform OCR to generate editable textOmniPage Desktop Image PanelMenu bar ToolbarsImage Panel Text EditorOmniPage Toolbox Managing documents ThumbnailsDocument Manager Customizing Document Manager columns Deleting pages from a documentClosing a document OmniPage DocumentsPrinting a document Why save to OPD How to save to OPDSettings ScannerDirect OCR ProcessText Editor ProofingCustom Layout Processing documents Scanning and recognizing a single Quick Start GuideLoading and recognizing sample image files Quick Start Guide Processing overview AutomaticManual CombinedAt a later time Using the OCR WizardOther applications Automatic processing Stopping and restarting automatic processing Manual processing Combined processing Start automatically and finish manuallyStart manually and finish automatically Processing with the OCR Wizard Processing from other applications How to set up Direct OCR How to use Direct OCRHow to use OmniPage Pro with PaperPort Processing with Schedule OCR Defining the source of page images Input from image filesInput from scanner Scan black and whiteScan grayscale Scan colorScanning with an ADF Brightness and contrastDescribing the layout of the document Scanning without an ADFSingle column, no table Multiple columns, no tableSingle column with table SpreadsheetZones and backgrounds Automatic zoningAuto-zone a whole Auto-zone a part of aManual zoning Auto-zone a page backgroundDrawing zones on an ignore background Drawing zones on a process backgroundZone types and properties Process zone oliveIgnore zone gray Text zone brownTable zone blue Graphic zone greenMake an irregular zone by addition Working with zonesDraw a single zone Split a zone Join two zones of the same typeMake an irregular zone by subtraction Table grids in the image Insert row dividers Insert column dividersMove dividers Remove dividersHow to modify a zone template Using zone templatesHow to save a zone template How to delete a template file How to unload a templateHow to replace one template with another Proofing and editing Editor display and views Green Non-dictionary words These were recognizedNo Formatting view Retain Fonts and Paragraphs viewProofreading OCR results True Page viewVerifying text Verifying text User dictionaries Starting a user dictionaryLoading or unloading a user dictionary Editing or deleting a user dictionaryTraining Manual trainingIntelliTrain Training files Editing paragraph attributes Text and image editingEditing character attributes Paragraph styles TablesHyperlinks Editing in TrueOn-the-fly editing Reading text aloud To hear text Use these keysYou also have the following keyboard controls Saving and exporting Saving original images Saving recognition results Saving a document as you work Selecting a formatting level No Formatting NFRetain Fonts and Paragraphs RFP Flowing Page FPSelecting advanced saving options True Page TP SpreadsheetChapter Copying pages to Clipboard To send pages by e-mail Sending pages by mailTo copy pages to the Clipboard Saving and exporting Technical information Troubleshooting Solutions to try firstTesting OmniPage Pro To test OmniPage Pro in VGA mode Windows NTIncreasing memory resources Increasing disk spaceText does not get recognized properly Problems with fax recognition System or performance problems during OCRAdvanced features in Schedule OCR Odma supportSupported file types File types for opening and saving imagesFile types for saving recognition results RFPUninstalling the software To uninstall or reinstall OmniPage ProD E Index Processing steps, 21 Overview of processing Index