OCR Program
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Thread: OCR Program

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Sep 2010
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    OCR Program

    I need a decent OCR program, a free one preferably. I have a number of medical reports which I have been scanning as jpg's. That's getting rather cumbersome. I need to be able to convert those jpg's to either Word or pdf documents.

    I downloaded and tried "Simple OCR" this morning, and it failed miserably. There were so many errors, both formatting and recognition, that the resulting document was unusable, unrecognizable.

    Would anyone care to make a recommendation of a decent OCR program?

  2. #2
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    Google Docs can do OCR. Not sure how good it is, though.
    http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/...ocr-in-34.html

  3. #3
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    Jun 2002
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    Port St Lucie, FL
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    Free OCR

    http://www.boxoft.com/free-ocr/
    This works for me.....

  4. #4
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    Medical reports may be more of a challenge to OCR than a free program can handle. I assume that there are no handwritten data fields that you are trying to convert. Even so, the formatting may be too much for anything less than a full-blown OCR program with lots of options.

  5. #5
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    Sep 2010
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    I think we can call off the search. Shortly after I posted I remembered that I used to have a copy of Omni-Page Pro v9.0. I was actually able to find it, after only a moderate amount of hunting.

    It still runs, and does a far superior job. The documents are recognizable and readable. I still have to go through, word by word, and make corrections. They're close enough that I can do that. The formatting is not great or perfect, but I can probably live/deal with that.

    Thank you all for your quick replies.

  6. #6
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    Jack up the DPI a tad. The default is just to low. What worked for me anyway with omnipage. Default was 150 but 300 and 500 did a much better job.

  7. #7
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    Sep 2010
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    Quote Originally Posted by Train View Post
    Jack up the DPI a tad. The default is just to low. ...
    Do you mean the DPI setting when I scan the document? I can find no DPI setting in OmniPage. If it's the DPI in the scan, I may have to go back and scan everything again. I normally scan at 150 or 200. I wasn't considering OCR'ing these reports when I scanned them.

  8. #8
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    I was using the professional mode. Many more option available.

  9. #9
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    Sep 2010
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    I was able to scan one document, 17 pages of text and tables, with pretty good success.

    It's a cumbersome process, though. I scanned each page at 400 DPI, and had a jpg image of each page. I then ran each image through OmniPage, ocr'ing each one, and had 17 rtf documents. I finally did a copy and paste, combining the 17 into one large Word document. Finally I went through that, trying to catch some/most (maybe) of the errors.

    Now I have a single document on the computer rather than 17 images, whereas I started with a 17 page paper report.

    There must be an easier way. Thanks for your help and encouragement.

  10. #10
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    What scanner are you using?

  11. #11
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    Sep 2010
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    Quote Originally Posted by Train View Post
    What scanner are you using?
    The scanner is a Cannon Lide 30/N1240U. The scanning software is PhotoStudio 2000. Both are old, I know, but both still work. The OCR software is OmniPage Pro v9.0, equally old. They're all running under W2K.

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Apr 2000
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    Arcsoft, and no, it does not have OCR per the manual.
    http://download.arcsoft.com/download..._e.pdf#submenu


    Well, I switched to Epson scanners and they do have a OCR capabilities. Yes I have been caught with scanner and printers that were not campatable with newer OSs. So I had to buy newer hardware.

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