Best OCR program

[james43]

Originally Posted by Iznogood

I am considering buying an OCR program for converting my books to epubs, and have come up with two alternatives: OmniPage 17 and Abbyy Fine Reader 10. Does anyone have tips on which one to go for? I'm aiming for accuracy: the less time spent on formating files before compilation to epub, the more time for proofreading. The less errors found during proof reading, the less time spent in correcting them.

I am going to try both before I eventually buy one of them, but was wondering what program is used "out there" by the rest and more experienced, and if anybody have any recomandations or ideas of what I should be looking for to get the best result possible from my scanner and my books.

I have tried both OmniPage and Abbyy Fine Reader but they give you this format that has weird stuff not allowing you to reformat properly. The only on I have found that gives you formatting that uses normal text and doesn't give you textboxes and pictrureboxes and strange margins is MeOCR. I use it often and it gives me pretty good results.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by james43

I have tried both OmniPage and Abbyy Fine Reader but they give you this format that has weird stuff not allowing you to reformat properly. The only on I have found that gives you formatting that uses normal text and doesn't give you textboxes and pictrureboxes and strange margins is MeOCR. I use it often and it gives me pretty good results.

You can configure most of good quality OCR programs to give you exact layout - textboxes, or just retain basic text formatting (such as italics, bold, centered text), or even plain text.

[DSpider]

Originally Posted by james43

I have tried both OmniPage and Abbyy Fine Reader but they give you this format that has weird stuff not allowing you to reformat properly. The only on I have found that gives you formatting that uses normal text and doesn't give you textboxes and pictrureboxes and strange margins is MeOCR. I use it often and it gives me pretty good results.

FineReader is considered to be "the best". Just don't save it as "Exact Copy", save it as "Formatted Text", or at least as "Editable Copy". Then you won't have any of those text boxes or strange margins. Personally, I always save it as "Formatted Text" and compare it to the (processed) scans that were run through Scan Tailor first. Then the layout re-creating process begins. Oh, the joy...