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| FineReader 6.0 Professional | |
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An important buzz phrase for working with digital documents is optical character recognition (OCR). While you can create a digital document in a word processor and print it, OCR software allows you to scan a printed document and convert the scanned image into editable text. One such OCR program that allows you to scan and edit is the new ABBYY FineReader 6.0 Professional. Law Office Computing readers might remember the OCR Software Shootout “The Quest for Paperless,” (see February/March 2002 Law Office Computing) where I pitted ScanSoft’s OmniPage Pro 11 against FineReader 5.0 Professional. I chose OmniPage as the winner in that shootout because it appeared to be the better of the two programs. In the current battle between OmniPage and FineReader 6.0 Pro, I would now go with FineReader. As you would expect with a new version, ABBYY has made several tremendous improvements in the FineReader software. One of the big additions is FineReader now can handle portable document format (PDF) conversion. This means if you have a PDF file you can’t manipulate, FineReader will convert it into working text that can be edited with a word processor. Another new feature of FineReader 6.0 Professional is “Intelligent Background Filtering” technology. This is supposed to improve the accuracy of OCR when documents are low contrast or slightly degraded. This is helpful when you have fuzzy faxes or documents that have been photocopied too many times. While not perfect (it has some difficulty recognizing text with graphic background) overall, I found this feature to be fairly impressive. It was able to read a poor-looking faxed itinerary from my travel agency. Beyond the newly advertised features of FineReader 6.0 Professional, it appears ABBYY put some extra care into improving its user interface. The fantastic wizards make for a nearly trouble-free OCR experience. The large buttons at the top under the main toolbar walk you through the entire process. The simplest choice is the “Scan & Read Wizard,” which asks a few questions and produces your OCR document. The four steps FineReader takes you through are:
The “Scan” step is pretty straightforward. You can let FineReader use your scanner’s Technology Without an Interesting Name (TWAIN) driver, or you can tell FineReader to use its own interface. I chose to use my scanner’s TWAIN interface because it had more options for setting the resolution, color mode, tone and so forth. When I installed FineReader, it automatically found my scanner. I didn’t have to do anything else except hit the “Scan” button. Next, the “Read” step is where FineReader does its magic. Once the scan is completed, you see your document appear in three different windows in the program. In the center is a split view that has the graphical image of the page on the left, and FineReader’s textual interpretation on the right. The bottom pane contains an enlarged view of the scanned image. You can turn these panes on or off as you desire. As FineReader “reads” through the document, it literally goes through all the text and provides you with a list of words or images it doesn’t recognize. The next step is the “Check Spelling.” You have the option of ignoring, confirming or changing each unrecognized section. Good improvements were made on FineReader’s ability to recognize characters, spaces and odd symbols. I was impressed — FineReader 6.0 appears to be even more accurate than 5.0. The last step is “Save.” With 6.0, FineReader added a few capabilities including enhanced PDF outputs and the ability to select the image resolution when saving into RTF, DOC, HTML and PDF formats. I also liked the “Format Settings” box where I could set specific options for each format in which I could save my document. Needless to say, FineReader 6.0 Professional is a step in the right direction of OCR products. There are a bunch of great little tools in the program that can be used when working with the document, such as the eraser tool. I also continue to be impressed with the number of languages that FineReader can read, including Esperanto and C++. If you are interested in purchasing a solid, well-rounded OCR program, then FineReader 6.0 Professional is an excellent choice, not too mention it continues to be a great bargain compared to its competitors. |
ABBYY Software House (877) 328-2229 www.abbyy.com; www.finereader.com
Price: $299.99 for full version; $149.99
to upgrade from any OCR software. Reviewed by Brett Burney, a legal
practice support coordinator at Thompson Hine in Cleveland. You can e-mail
him at Brett.Burney@ PROS CONS VERDICT |
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