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Free simple OCR program for Windows?

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  • 27-03-2013 8:40pm
    #1
    barneysplash
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,205 ✭✭✭


    Hi all

    I am looking for a simple program to help a friend get the most from her scanner.

    I need a program that can take a page of text and when I scan
    it into the computer with the scanner, convert the text to an editable form.

    This is called an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) program.

    A lot of scanners come with such a program, but my friend does
    not have any discs that came with the scanner.

    I have done some research and found that the system called Tesseract
    is good, but does not come with an easy to use Windows interface.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract_(software)

    I tried the program "Free OCR" but I do not like the spam programs it forces
    you to install with the main program, or the fact that it keeps a copy
    of the scanned document in the program folder C:\freeocr

    I then tried Lime OCR from Google, but this kept on crashing.

    Does anyone know of a simple and reliable freeware OCR program for Windows?

    Thanks

    Barney


Comments

  • Options
    #2
    Torqay
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,835 ✭✭✭Torqay


    There is TopOCR. No longer free, but older versions can still be found. I have 3.1 somehere, here's a working link for Version 3.0.

    It was designed to OCR poor quality images of documents taken with digital cameras, so the focus was on accuracy. The latest version 4.3 costs a Fiver, for a while it was only sold in a bundle with a special document camera for 200 dollar or so. Great piece of software, IMHO beats the heck out ABBYY FineReader in terms of accuracy.


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    #3
    CreepingDeath
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,015 ✭✭✭CreepingDeath


    Torqay wrote: »
    There is TopOCR. No longer free, but older versions can still be found. I have 3.1 somehere, here's a working link for Version 3.0.

    I downloaded 3.0 from your link and ran it through "VirusTotal", which uses 46 different virus/malware scanners on any file you upload.

    3 of the 46 scanners found something suspicious.
    They may be false positives... but that's up to you to judge for yourself.

    VirusTotal link for TopOCR 3.0 Exe file


  • Options
    #4
    Torqay
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,835 ✭✭✭Torqay


    Too bad then... lotsa sh*te out there and one cannot be careful enough.


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    #5
    Overheal
    Registered Users Posts: 83,319 ✭✭✭✭Overheal


    adobe reader, foxit PDF, and even Windows 8 reader all support this functionality

    its accuracy depends on the scan resolution.

    I havent met one yet that reliably imported tabulated data or spreadsheets; good luck on that one.


  • Options
    #6
    barneysplash
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,205 ✭✭✭barneysplash


    Overheal wrote: »
    adobe reader, foxit PDF, and even Windows 8 reader all support this functionality.

    You mean you can scan using Adobe Reader and perform OCR on the scanned data?
    How?


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    #7
    Torqay
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,835 ✭✭✭Torqay


    Some PDF Readers (such as Adobe Reader or PDF-Xchangeviewer) have OCR cabilty. You'll need to scan the document and export to PDF first.


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    #8
    barneysplash
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,205 ✭✭✭barneysplash


    Torqay wrote: »
    Some PDF Readers (such as Adobe Reader or PDF-Xchangeviewer) have OCR cabilty. You'll need to scan the document and export to PDF first.


    Interesting, will give it a try. :cool:


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