Post by: bellbram on February 26, 2007, 06:58:54 PM
Anyone out there know how?
Post by: jwboyd on February 26, 2007, 07:09:05 PM
Post by: bellbram on February 26, 2007, 07:25:48 PM
Post by: RNKIII on February 26, 2007, 08:13:23 PM
Usually a scanner comes with a CD of 'extra stuff' (technical term
)... that sometimes includs OCR / Optical Character Recognition software. I know both my Canon scanner and my HP AIO have it. It does take (usually) a multi-step process to do the conversion.This would allow you to scan the document into a word processing format / application that could then be edited.
Right now if you are just scanning / copying the document that is all you can do is 'look at it' you can't do anything with/to it... it is just a 'picture' of the document.
Best of luck and hope your 'searches' are proving fruitful.
Bob K rnkiii
Post by: kimmer on February 26, 2007, 09:13:33 PM
Post by: krissel on February 27, 2007, 02:57:36 AM
http://www.simpleocr.com/Demo/
http://www.simpleocr.com/
Post by: bellbram on February 27, 2007, 05:18:43 AM
Bob: Unfortunately my Epson Photo RX420 does not have any 'extra stuff'.
kimmer: Had a look at ReadIrisPro, but it seems a tad expensive and I'd rather find something a bit cheaper as I only want to use OCR very infrequently. Had a look at the Demo version and it looks pretty complicated to me. Maybe beyond my limited IT capabilities!
kris: Downloaded the demo version of Simple OCR which will only take very small files (under 200K). Anyway to test it I created an 80K TIFF file using AppleWorks. This is what the TIFF file actually had — "This is a test sheet for OCR by Simple OCR".
The result of the Upload was : " -'C h ' 1 s j ' s a '1- ia = ,1- n h = e t f o r O C Q L-. q : z Q :, e '*' a r n '' e 'Nk z C D . . . wvuou u u I % &.# y U . I l : ja I we I & "
Not quite what I wanted!!
Suggestions????
Post by: RNKIII on February 27, 2007, 05:25:32 AM
Have you tried the Epson site to see if they might have anything available that would work with your particular machine??
It may be that their 'tech support' could suggest something also??
Bob K. rnkiii
Post by: bellbram on February 27, 2007, 09:39:00 AM
Thanks for the suggestion. Epson say they have nothing to offer and suggsted
SimpleOCR. I told them the tale of the gobbledegook I got and they said they always really recommend Abbey Finereader. I had a look at the download site and decided that I'd rather keep the money in the bank!
So, being something of a cheapskate, I'm no further forward, but I'm really not prepared to lash out around £100 for something I just want to use once or twice.
Guess I'll just have to get down to copy-typing.
That's unless some other TeeEss genius has a good idea
Post by: Xairbusdriver on February 27, 2007, 10:25:28 AM
QUOTE
...nothing to offer...
A little less than what I'd call product support! Although I've never had an Epson scanner, it's surprising that they didn't include something with it. Our Brother MFC came with some rather crude scanner software but it works fine on the OCR front. Keeping the files small may also decrease the reliability of the OCR software. I scan our stuff at 200ppi and it seems to be pretty accurate. Using smaller resolutions may make it harder for the software to "see" the letters accurately.
Too bad the SimpleOCR didn't work well enough to be usable, I too, have declined the 'temptation' of buying Iris, although they still send me emails touting its superiority. For that price, it should be 110% accurate!
OCR has always been a difficult application to get working, and the extremely large variety of font families don't make things easy, either. The Brother stuff occasionally sees specks on the paper as 'periods', "th" sometimes becomes "(h". Thankfully, the word processor that gets the 'product' can see these as spelling errors. But with any software, I suspect there will always be a need to proof read.
If you do this only once in a blue ( or other colored ) moon, perhaps you can prevail on another household member to type as you dictate ( that may be as close to being a 'dictator' as you'll ever get, anyway! ).
Post by: RNKIII on February 27, 2007, 10:29:28 AM
Think about this...
You could send me a scanned copy via email attachment.
I would then print it out, and OCR that copy into a word processing document format of your choice and send it back to you as an attachment on a return email.
Might be a method that would work if you don't have too large a document either in format or content..
Let me know, I'd be glad to help if possible.
Bob K. rnkiii
Post by: Gregg on February 27, 2007, 11:07:22 AM
I've had success copying and pasting from a pdf to AppleWorks or Word.
Post by: tacit on February 27, 2007, 11:31:46 AM
QUOTE(Gregg @ Feb 27 2007, 05:07 PM) [snapback]120362[/snapback]
What about turning the scanned document into a pdf file? Is that possible?
I've had success copying and pasting from a pdf to AppleWorks or Word.
I've had success copying and pasting from a pdf to AppleWorks or Word.
There are many kids of PDF files.
A scanned image that is saved as a PDF contains no text. It only contains a picture. You can not copy a picture from a scanned image in a PDF and then paste it into a word processor as text. Only a PDF that contains text will let you copy the text as text.
No matter how you slice it, a picture is not text. It must be processed and "understood" by an OCR program in order to become text.
Post by: bellbram on February 27, 2007, 11:35:14 AM
The cat regularly practices typing and is constantly jumping on the desk and walking over the keyboard. She's quite good at depressing the keys, but just can't spell. (Though she'd do a better job than SimpleOCR!)
Rufus is too long in the body and short in the legs.
SWMBO might not take too kindly to the suggestion, though I may summon up the courage to ask. Time was, when the dear girl was my secretary anyway!
Bob: That's a mighty kind offer. I'll drop you a lne and we can 'chat' about it.
Gregg: I've tried that, and whilst I can copy the pdf text into a WP, it goes in to a kind of box surrounded by dotted lines, but does not permit of editing.
Thanks again to you all for your suggestions.
Post by: bellbram on February 27, 2007, 01:15:30 PM
I needed an OCR app — or thought I did — because I had lost the original file from which I had made a hard copy, and wanted to make several additions and amendments to it. Not having the original — created with MarinerWrite — meant an awful lot of added typing.
BUT, just a few moments ago, by chance, I discovered the lost file which was lurking in the depths of a partition on my external HD. I have no idea why the alias on my DT couldn't find it, not why Spotlight couldn't either.
Anyway, I have it now so no longer need an OCR app.
I feel a complete nitwit for puttingyou all to the trouble of trying to help me and my face is very red
and again.Thank you all. Sorry you've been troubled
Post by: Xairbusdriver on February 27, 2007, 06:46:04 PM
I don't much depend on "Spotlight" the app to find anything. command-F works much better for me, even though it still uses the Spotlight 'engine'. You can specify where to search, what period of time the object may have been created/opened/modified, what might be some text inside it, what type of object it might be ( text, MarinerWrite, pdf, sound, etc. ). And much more ( or usually less ). I have mine set up to default with a 'Name'...'contains:' ready to go, I believe the 'standard' set up has something less usable. I can't remember what it used to look like.
But the best part is that it will give you a list of matches and you can click on any and see where it 'lives'. It gives you the entire path to it on the bottom of its window. You can then open a Finder window and see if that's really the one you think it is, while leaving the found searches window open for more checking.
Much of this can be done in the Spotlight entry box, but manually and not without losing all the entry if it is longer than a couple dozens letters.
Of course, there's also EasyFind which works much the same way as command-F.
Another way is to download/store everything on your Desktop, no folders to ever drill down to! It 's guaranteed to slow down the computer, but the darn things are sometimes just too fast, anyway!
Your choice.
Post by: RobW on February 27, 2007, 07:02:18 PM
QUOTE
Another way is to download/store everything on your Desktop, no folders to ever drill down to! It 's guaranteed to slow down the computer, but the darn things are sometimes just too fast, anyway!
I see you've met my wife and seen her desktop. Or couldn't see her desktop as it turns out.
Peter, you're way too hard on yourself. I'm glad you found what you needed. I'm also glad you asked the question, because I've often wondered about the same thing.
Post by: Gregg on February 27, 2007, 07:26:17 PM
QUOTE(tacit @ Feb 27 2007, 11:31 AM) [snapback]120368[/snapback]
A scanned image that is saved as a PDF contains no text. It only contains a picture. You can not copy a picture from a scanned image in a PDF and then paste it into a word processor as text. Only a PDF that contains text will let you copy the text as text.
I'm not surprised. That was what I suspected. But, he had tried it already, come to find out. Doesn't hurt anything. Thomas Edison, I feel your pain.
Post by: krissel on February 28, 2007, 01:45:09 AM
Post by: bellbram on March 01, 2007, 12:34:57 AM
You really are a great bunch and I count it a privilege to be able to converse with you.
