It always surprises and sometimes outrages people when I say this but the best OCR engine I have ever used is the Microsoft Document Image Scanning provided with Office Tools in Office XP, 2003, 2007, but discontinued and not available in Office 2010. This has been discussed extensively on another list I belong to and often people are incredulous and disbelieving, but suffice to say that several people who have actually tried it have emailed me to confirmed my experience, and out of the people who have tried it , nobody has disagreed. Microsoft outperforms Kurzweil version 11 to a significant degree. I have only just received the Kurzweil 13 upgrade so have not done comparative test to see if Kurzweil can compete in OCR accuracy yet. I have used Omnipage, the EyePal scanner on the Mac, and in the old days textbridtge but none can compete with MDI for OCR. The sole exception is that personally I have found Omnipage the best solution for scanning tables. I was alerted to the outstanding OCR capacity of MDI by the people at Trade Scanners back in 2006 when I was about to start a masters course before I got anywhere near a DSA solutions. I had just spent a lot of money on a scanner and asked them to sell me their best OCR package. I explained I was blind and why I needed it. They hesitated, and then confessed that they could sell me software but none of it could outperform MDI for oCR accuracy. I was surprised but time and time again they have been proved right. It appears that Microsoft is oblivious to this hidden treasure and seem determined to phase it out . if you could buy say an old version of Office XP for a small sum it would be worth it just for the OCR capacity alone. I am happy to send some chapters of a book off list, scanned with MDI and not proof read so that you can assess the accuracy yourself.
David Griffith -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Gordon Smith Sent: 29 July 2012 18:16 To: Windows Access; Share Your Enthusiasm! Subject: FineReader Professional Hi all Anybody using the Windows version of this product? How does it rate in comparison to, for instance, either the very expensive Kurzweil K1000 which is, of course, a product written primarily for those with accessibility or learning difficulties, or the more generic OmniPage Professional 18? I am well aware that if I get the job I've applied for, K1000 may be very useful to me as it will directly produce a .BRL formatted document suitable for embossing. But we shall see. Anyway, to my original question. How does FineReader compare or, perhaps, I should be asking the question how accurate it is in terms of recognition? The more accurate I can make my OCR work, the better it will be. Gordon ======================================= To post to this group, please send your message to: [email protected] The Windows-Access E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit your personalise subscriber options page, located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/windows-access You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Windows-Access forum at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/windows-access/index.html Or: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> --------------------------------------- [email protected] ======================================= To post to this group, please send your message to: [email protected] The Windows-Access E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit your personalise subscriber options page, located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/windows-access You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Windows-Access forum at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/windows-access/index.html Or: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> --------------------------------------- [email protected]
