Abbyy Finescanner (OCR) - has anyone ever tried it?

[NASCARaddicted]

Recently, I found an app for android (and iOS) that sounds really interesting.

You scan a book with the camera of the smartphone. And then it converts the photos into usable text. It works with 193 different languages. It even can read old fraktur fonts.

It sounds too good to be true. Instead of a big scanner and expensive software, you can use this app ... but does it really work?

I wanted to try it. The app says, you can use it on one page, before you have to pay for the service. I tried it, but it seems as if the photo wasn't good enough, because the app said my picture is unreadable.

So, has anyone of you tried it? How was it? Was it a normal font, or an old blackletter or fraktur font?

Thanks in advance.

[Turtle91]

I tried a few of those scanner apps on my iphone 6+ and wasn't really impressed at all with the quality of the OCR. I was certainly not impressed with the price! I'd guess that the engine allowed within a phone app is not even close to the full featured software on a desktop. I seriously doubt it's due to the quality of the picture. The peeps over at https://www.diybookscanner.org/forum/ use cheap cameras on their scanner units all the time with great results. They also have free software specifically designed to OCR book scans from those cheap cameras. Perhaps that will help??

[ApK]

ABBYY is a leader in OCR software, and phone cameras are getting better and better, so I have no doubt the app "works." But you say "scan a book." A cell phone and app setup might be practical for an occasional page or two, or a short document, but a "book?" I doubt it will be worth the effort it will take for any significant volume.
Get (or make) a book scanner, if you do a lot of that, or out-source it.

[Turtle91]

ApK...I'd recommend you take a look at the link I provided. There are many examples of small cheapo cameras, as well as phones, being used to scan entire books. And with one of those scanners you can get several hundred pages per hour scanned and OCR'd...so scanning a book with a phone is actually quite do-able. I know whereof I speak... I built one of those scanners. But please don't take my word for it...check out the website!

However, the OP was talking about the apps on the phone. And, while the app might be provided by ABBYY, it is still just an app. You might get adequate performance out of the app engine, but I guarantee it is not up to the excellent performance of their desktop program.

Cheers,

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

ApK...I'd recommend you take a look at the link I provided. There are many examples of small cheapo cameras, as well as phones, being used to scan entire books. And with one of those scanners you can get several hundred pages per hour scanned and OCR'd...so scanning a book with a phone is actually quite do-able. I know whereof I speak... I built one of those scanners. But please don't take my word for it...check out the website!

However, the OP was talking about the apps on the phone. And, while the app might be provided by ABBYY, it is still just an app. You might get adequate performance out of the app engine, but I guarantee it is not up to the excellent performance of their desktop program.

Cheers,

Yeah, not sure what you took from my post, but I was agreeing with you.
Using a phone's camera with proper software and rigging is making a book scanner. Very different than using a phone and app. But I'm sure the app works as advertised for the appropriate scenarios.

BTW, any luck getting the "Gnihcnip" think to catch on?

[Turtle91]

lolz...sorry I read your post completely wrong

I haven't seen anyone but you use "Gnihcnip"...but I hear it's really popular...somewhere...

[NASCARaddicted]

thanks for your replies.

I should have mentioned it: the main reason why I am interested in this app, is because it can read fraktur fonts. Usually, the books that I scan are from before 1945, and back then, most books in Germany used fraktur fonts.

Normal OCR Software can't read fraktur very good. I know, Tesseract can. And there is a way to use Abbyy Finereader 12, if you train it.

Anyway, I gave the app a try. At first I tried it with the built in camera, but the result wasn't as good as I wanted it. However, you can also use existing images, made with a flatbed scanner.

So, I gave it a try. On the left is the original scan (however, I used Scantailor to edit it before using the app). On the right, you can see the result as a doc file. I marked the errors with red. I gotta say, I am really impressed. I expected much more errors.