Introduction | OmniWare Pro 12 ScanSoft guide

Chapter 2

Introduction

You probably use your computer for business correspondence, preparing reports, handling data and an ever-increasing number of other uses. The challenge is that, in spite of the digital revolution, certain sources of information still circulate in printed, paper form and cannot be used immediately in a computer.

For example, if you want to incorporate information from a magazine article in a report you are preparing, you somehow have to get the text from the article into your computer. Painstakingly retyping the article is not an appealing solution.

This chapter introduces you to the solution: optical character recognition (OCR). It describes how OmniPage Pro 12 uses OCR technology to transform text from scanned pages or image files into editable text for use in your favorite computer applications.

We present the following topics:

XWhat is optical character recognition

•Documents in OmniPage Pro

•Basic processing steps

XThe OmniPage Desktop

XManaging documents

XOmniPage Documents

XSettings

OmniPage Pro User’s Guide

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OmniWare Pro 12 ScanSoft manual Introduction

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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 Readme File This User’s Guide Online HelpScanning and other information Bold Using this Guide Online Html Help Getting online HelpContext-Sensitive Help Tech Notes Glossary Installation and setup System requirements Before installing OmniPage Pro Installing OmniPage ProTo install OmniPage Pro Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro How to start the program Streamlined interface New features in OmniPage ProRegistering your software Dramatic increase in accuracy Advanced saving options Better proofing and verifyingFormatting levels for display and saving Superior page analysis Introduction Text formatting What is optical character recognitionOmniPage Pro’s OCR capabilities Graphics Perform OCR to generate editable text Documents in OmniPage ProBasic processing steps Bring a set of images into OmniPage Pro Image Panel OmniPage Desktop Toolbars Menu bar Text Editor Image Panel OmniPage Toolbox Thumbnails Managing documents Document Manager Deleting pages from a document Customizing Document Manager columns Printing a document OmniPage DocumentsClosing a document How to save to OPD Why save to OPD Process SettingsScanner Direct OCR Custom Layout ProofingText Editor Processing documents Loading and recognizing sample image files Quick Start GuideScanning and recognizing a single Quick Start Guide Combined Processing overviewAutomatic Manual Other applications Using the OCR WizardAt a later time Automatic processing Stopping and restarting automatic processing Manual processing Start automatically and finish manually Combined processing Start manually and finish automatically Processing with the OCR Wizard Processing from other applications How to use Direct OCR How to set up Direct OCR How to use OmniPage Pro with PaperPort Processing with Schedule OCR Input from image files Defining the source of page images Scan color Input from scannerScan black and white Scan grayscale Brightness and contrast Scanning with an ADF Scanning without an ADF Describing the layout of the document Spreadsheet Single column, no tableMultiple columns, no table Single column with table Auto-zone a part of a Zones and backgroundsAutomatic zoning Auto-zone a whole Drawing zones on a process background Manual zoningAuto-zone a page background Drawing zones on an ignore background Process zone olive Zone types and properties Graphic zone green Ignore zone grayText zone brown Table zone blue Draw a single zone Working with zonesMake an irregular zone by addition Make an irregular zone by subtraction Join two zones of the same typeSplit a zone Table grids in the image Remove dividers Insert row dividersInsert column dividers Move dividers How to save a zone template Using zone templatesHow to modify a zone template How to replace one template with another How to unload a templateHow to delete a template file Proofing and editing Retain Fonts and Paragraphs view Editor display and viewsGreen Non-dictionary words These were recognized No Formatting view True Page view Proofreading OCR results Verifying text Verifying text Editing or deleting a user dictionary User dictionariesStarting a user dictionary Loading or unloading a user dictionary Manual training Training IntelliTrain Training files Editing character attributes Text and image editingEditing paragraph attributes Editing in True Paragraph stylesTables Hyperlinks On-the-fly editing To hear text Use these keys Reading text aloud You also have the following keyboard controls Saving and exporting Saving original images Saving recognition results Saving a document as you work Flowing Page FP Selecting a formatting levelNo Formatting NF Retain Fonts and Paragraphs RFP True Page TP Spreadsheet Selecting advanced saving options Chapter Copying pages to Clipboard To copy pages to the Clipboard Sending pages by mailTo send pages by e-mail Saving and exporting Technical information Solutions to try first Troubleshooting To test OmniPage Pro in VGA mode Windows NT Testing OmniPage Pro Increasing disk space Increasing memory resources Text does not get recognized properly System or performance problems during OCR Problems with fax recognition Odma support Advanced features in Schedule OCR File types for opening and saving images Supported file types RFP File types for saving recognition results To uninstall or reinstall OmniPage Pro Uninstalling the software D E Index Processing steps, 21 Overview of processing Index