Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is part of the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), which means that it can be used in all apps targeting Windows 10. With OCR you can extract text and text layout information from images. It’s designed to handle various types of images, from. Best optical character recognition scanner. If you are getting OCR software for professional use, be sure that the program you use meets your needs for accuracy and speed. Do some research in order to ensure that the software achieves a level of accuracy that would make it a reliable solution for your document scanning requirements. Mar 04, 2015 FreeOCR is a free Optical Character Recognition Software for Windows and supports scanning from most Twain scanners and can also open most.
OCR
Pros
- Most powerful and efficient OCR software available for OS X.
- Highly accurate character recognition and page-layout analysis.
- Wide range of output options for documents and ePub formats.
Cons
- Lacks the built-in proofreader in the Windows version.
Bottom Line
It's been a long time the Mac had flexible, powerful OCR software. FineReader lacks a built-in proofreader, but in every other way it's by far the best choice for OS X.
In almost everything related to graphics, OS X apps tend to be more flexible and more powerful than anything you can find in Windows, with one major exception: Optical-character-reading (OCR) software for Windows has always been more powerful than Mac-based OCR apps. Now that Abbyy's FineReader Pro ($99.99) has arrived for the Mac, it's still true that Windows has better OCR software, but that's only because Abbyy's Windows-based OCR app, Abbyy FineReader 11 Professional Edition, is even more powerful than its Mac-based OCR app. Abbyy's apps are now are our Editors' Choice OCR products for both Windows and OS X, but the OS X version hasn't caught up with all the features in the Windows version.
It's All About the OCR
Like all Abbyy's products, FineReader Pro uses the best OCR engine on the market. Whether the app reads pages from a scanner or from pictures or PDF files on your disk, it does a spectacularly good job of extracting text, arranging tables, and preserving layout.
FineReader Pro outputs editable documents in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML, plain text, and e-book formats—and these documents typically require only a minimum of editing to correct any mistakes the app made in reading the original text or layout. It also outputs PDF files that display either clean text instead of the original scanned image of the text, or with searchable invisible text hidden under the original picture so you get the combined benefits of accurate appearance and searchable text.
Getting Started
You can use FineReader Pro either in its automated mode or in a mode that lets you adjust its settings at each stage of its operation. In automated mode, you simply choose an operation from the opening menu and let the program do its work—for example. On the left-hand side of the opening menu, you select a source—either your scanner or a file on your disk. On the right-hand side, you choose an automated operation, such as 'Convert to Excel Spreadsheet.' A gear icon next to the name of the automated operation lets you specify some basic output options, such as image quality and whether to use CSS styles in creating HTML pages. After a few seconds, the program prompts you for an output location and file name, and your output document is written to disk.
Paper hasn't gone away. You've probably noticed that even in the digital era you still have stacks of hard-copy printouts, books, magazines, newspaper clippings, invoices, bills, and other paper that you have to search through by hand, one page at a time. Or you need to get an old essay that you typed or printed years ago into digital format, and you're dreading retyping it. This is where OCR (Optical Character Reading) software becomes more of a necessity than a luxury. OCR creates searchable, editable text from printed documents—and also from photos of printed documents, or PDFs made from scanning old books and papers. The more paper documents you have, the more you need OCR.
When to OCR
You use OCR for two basic functions: archiving documents or repurposing documents. For archiving, you'll typically feed your documents (receipts, business cards, handouts, or anything else) into your scanner and let your OCR software create searchable PDF files that show a scanned image of the original document but also contain—hidden underneath the scanned image—text that you can copy from the PDF and paste into other applications, or that you can search for when you need to find the original.
For repurposing, OCR typically converts a printed table into an Excel spreadsheet, or an old book either into a PDF with searchable text hidden under the page images or into a word-processing document that you can edit and reuse. High-powered OCR software can also convert printed text into HTML files that anyone can view in a browser.
Choosing OCR Software
When you choose an OCR app, you'll want to decide whether you want it to run automatically, interactively, or a combination of both. When an OCR app runs automatically, all you do is click a button, walk away, and come back to find your output files already created. When it runs interactively, you typically use image-enhancement tools to straighten or sharpen an image, layout tools to block out parts of a page that you don't want in the output, and then a proofreading tool to correct any misreadings by the software. With most apps, you can choose between automation and interaction by giving you a set of interactive tools and letting you decide which ones to use. But read or reviews to see how much freedom of choice you get with each individual app.
Behind the Scenes
Behind the interface of every OCR app is built on a character-recognition engine that does the grunt work of converting images into text. The fanciest interface can't make up for the limits of a recognition engine that isn't consistently accurate—and it's no accident that our Editors' Choice products have the strongest available recognition engines.
Free Ocr For Mac
FEATURED IN THIS ROUNDUP
ABBYY FineReader 11
$280.00
%displayPrice% at %seller% This is the highest-power OCR software on the market, and it's indispensable for anyone who needs fast, accurate text-recognition. Read the full review ››
ABBYY FineReader Express Edition for Mac
$99.99
%displayPrice% at %seller% Despite the lack of a built-in editor or image-correction tools, Abbyy still offers the best OCR available on the Mac. Read the full review ››
ABBYY FineReader Touch (for iPhone)
$2.99
%displayPrice% at %seller% This clever app lets you image documents with an iPhone and save them through the cloud to searchable, editable text. Read the full review ››
Omnipage Ultimate
$499
%displayPrice% at %seller% Omnipage offers exceptionally high-powered OCR, and a seemingly unlimited range of features, but ultimately the software suffers from a flawed interface. Read the full review ››
Optical Character Recognition (ocr) Software
Prizmo (for Mac)
$49.95
%displayPrice% at %seller% Prizmo is a terrific app for performing OCR on iPhone photos, but it has a far less effective OCR engine than ABBYY FineReader Express. Read the full review ››