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, its 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 gt 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 gt 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!