Document OCR Software

[rockymtnhigh]

Ok guys, looking for some advice here. I have a ton of PDFs with narratives in them that I need to convert to regular text. Many of these are photographic representations of documents that were typed, and they need OCR software to convert.

I use a program called Able2Extract to extract the text from the PDFs, but it does a crap job. I have been looking at OmniPage Professional 17, which looks like a heck of a package, but it is more than $300 even with a educational license, and only seems to offer upgrades for the last two versions of the program.

I am hesitant to drop that amount of cash without knowing how likely it is that the software is going to actually do what I need it to do. So, anyone have experience with it - and advice?

 

[iwc5893]

I used to use Omni way back when (early 90's), and it was about the best OCR software out there at the time. I haven't used it since then, so I can't really say how good it is now.

 

[GravelChan]

Do a search for "free pdfzilla"

It's a freebee pdf to txt converter. I converted the text in a pretty crappy pdf of
an old newspaper page. I was amazed at how well it turned out. They have a
sharware version that will also convert to word etc.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Do a search for "free pdfzilla"

It's a freebee pdf to txt converter. I converted the text in a pretty crappy pdf of
an old newspaper page. I was amazed at how well it turned out. They have a
sharware version that will also convert to word etc.

Tried it, and it doesn't work at all. All I get is a blank word document after converting the PDF. Oh well....

 

[Islandguy43]

Tried it, and it doesn't work at all. All I get is a blank word document after converting the PDF. Oh well....

Have you tried the OpenOffice.org - The Free and Open Productivity Suite ? I have used it to convert word files and scans through my paperport software into pdf files. Best thing it is free

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Have you tried the OpenOffice.org - The Free and Open Productivity Suite ? I have used it to convert word files and scans through my paperport software into pdf files. Best thing it is free

I already have PDFs, I need to OCR them to readable text. The PDFs are basically graphics - the police department scanned the original documents into electronic records, but they used a scanner rather than a Print to PDF feature.

Can OpenOffice convert PDF to text? I was not aware it could.

 

[navychop]

I doubt very much that it could. I have heard of some programs that convert PDF files to text, but they seem to disappear fairly quickly. After all, the nature of PDF is that they (generally) don't want you to be able to easily convert to something editable. Of course, some allow for this.

We don't currently use OCR software. Some years ago, we used OmniPage. IIRC it was touted as 98% accurate. Amazing how far short 98% can fall.

 

[Ira Lacher]

Acrobat can do that. The feature is in Acrobat Pro ver. 7. You should be able to get a reasonably priced used copy on eBay.

 

[jayn_j]

Acrobat can do that. The feature is in Acrobat Pro ver. 7. You should be able to get a reasonably priced used copy on eBay.

Maybe. It only works if the document has not been locked for editing, and if the text is imported as text. Often the text will be saved as bitmaps, and then the only hope is to scan it with an OCR.

 

[harshness]

I think the point that everyone is missing is that the PDFs are scanned (bitmaps) and not the result of printing to a PDF. This is the most insidious and evil kind of PDF as they cannot be readily converted or searched.

The solution is to cough up the money for an OCR package or find a cheap scanner that comes with one.

 

[vodad]

OpenOffice.org will have a little luck doing this, but I do not think it will be that great. (But I would be happy if it is)

here is a link to an extension to use

Sun PDF Import Extension | OpenOffice.org repository for Extensions

it may or may not work. Let me know how it does if you try it.


also Microsoft Office Document Imaging has some OCR capabilities, not sure how much, but you could give that a try.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

I think the point that everyone is missing is that the PDFs are scanned (bitmaps) and not the result of printing to a PDF. This is the most insidious and evil kind of PDF as they cannot be readily converted or searched.

The solution is to cough up the money for an OCR package or find a cheap scanner that comes with one.

Yes. I have no problem extracting text from a PDF that was electronically-derived; but these files are excactly what you suggest, scanned (bitmaps) and thus OCR is what I need, the ability to detect and read the text that is in the images.

I suspect I will need OmniPage, just hoping to find someone who has a recent version, and can test a conversion of one of my files, because I what I do not want to do is have to spend $300 and have it NOT work.

 

[Voyager6]

Download a free 15 day trial of OmniPage Professional 16 here. Hope this helps.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Download a free 15 day trial of OmniPage Professional 16 here. Hope this helps.

Sweet - there were no trials for 17 on the US site. DOwnloading now. The download is for version 16, but I am sure this will make it clear to me whether or not this will work.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

BTW, that is what I love about this place. You ask a question - and you get an answer.

 

[gbjbany]

BTW i use omnipages little brother - paperport professional 11 it's 199 and it has a ocr product in it, i just converted a pdf to word ok. it looks like the regular 11 ($99) also does ocr, but i cant be certain.

from the manual - Improved OCR Accuracy: PaperPort 11 provides more accurate conversion to text on all scanned and PDF documents including lower resolution images.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Success! Not perfect, but far better than anything else I have tried, with the ability to easily customize what you actually convert. I will end up dropping the dough to buy OmniPage Pro 17.

 

[riffjim4069]

Success! Not perfect, but far better than anything else I have tried, with the ability to easily customize what you actually convert. I will end up dropping the dough to buy OmniPage Pro 17.

I just read this thread...OmniPage was the best commercial product around when I was involved with a document management project during the late '90s.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

I just read this thread...OmniPage was the best commercial product around when I was involved with a document management project during the late '90s.

Yeah, I am not surprised.

I just downloaded their PDF Converter program; its about $200 less, so I am going to see how it compared with the pro version.

Interesting, you can only get the free trials from their UK website, not from the US site.

I also found you can get the full software for a fraction of retail from Amazon. Was surprised a bit by that; I think they are OEM packages, not sure.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Their PDF Convert 5 program works extremely well - obviously has the same OCR engine as Omnipage; what it lacks is the ability to select parts of the page NOT to scan, as well as the ability to actually do OCR editing. Still, I ran the same complex document - complete with tables, and such, and it did an identical job.

I was quite pleased.