Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes

http://live.pirillo.com/ – I received an email the other day from someone wondering why documents they scan into their computer rearranges the text and doesn’t retain formatting. Well user-whose-name-I-can’t-pronounce, what you’re asking about deals with OCR.

OCR, or Optical Character Recognition software allows you to scan a document and edit it. If the OCR software isn’t very good, then it probably won’t retain the layout that the original document had. You are probably using whatever software came with your all-in-one machine, and I don’t know what brand that is.

The problem is, you’re not really going to get really good OCR software unless you pay virtually hundreds of dollars. Probably the best I know of is OmniPage. OmniPage Professional 16 is the fastest and most precise way to convert high volumes of paper, PDF and forms into files you can edit and search.

Unfortunately, I don’t know of any open source or cheaper software titles that are on the same level with OmniPage. Do you? If you use something that works just as well, without the price tag, I’d love to hear about it. I’m sure that user-whose-name-I-can’t-pronounce would love to hear your suggestions, as well.

Want to embed this video in your blog? Use this code:

<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/u14tRRVOGj8"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/u14tRRVOGj8" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://chris.pirillo.com/">Chris</a> | <a href="http://live.pirillo.com/">Live Tech Support</a> | <a href="http://media.pirillo.com/">Video Help</a> | <a href="http://feeds.pirillo.com/ChrisPirilloShow">Add to iTunes</a>

Formats Available: MPEG4 Video (.mp4) Flash Video (.flv) MP3 Audio (.mp3)

Scanning Documents with OCR

My New Glasses