OmniPage 17 Review: Nuance's Latest OCR Software

Another year has passed and the technology for document scanning software or optical character recognition software (OCR software) in 2010 keeps getting better and better. Never before has it been easier to create, store, and edit your scanned documents. Nuance is still leading the way with their latest OCR software solution OmniPage 17.

Omnipage 17 allows you to convert your scanned documents (paper, PDF files, digital photographs) into a format that you can easily manipulate and edit. There are two versions of this product: the standard version, which is geared more towards home users, and the professional version. Let's take a look at both.

OmniPage 17 Standard Version

OmniPage 17 is one of the fastest and most accurate ways of transforming your paper documents, PDF files, and digital photographs into an easy-to-edit format. Documents that would take hours to retype are transformed in an instant. The standard version of OmniPage 17 has everything you liked about OmniPage 16 but packs some new features like:

• New Hyper-Binary Conversion delivers 42% accuracy increase for scanned documents


• 23% overall accuracy increase for PDF and digital documents


• 99%+ accuracy for document conversion and archiving critical business documents


• 200% faster launch speed


• Support for the iPhone, 2-megapixel phone cameras, and the Amazon Kindle


• Works with ANY scanner

These are just a few of the key features of OmniPage 17. One of the huge advantages of OmniPage is that the software works with any scanner you have. You're not dependent upon the software that might come with your scanner.

The standard version of OmniPage is perfect for home office users, small business users, and students. Not to mention it is also a couple hundred dollars cheaper than the professional version. You get all the power you need for a very reasonable price.

Learn more about OmniPage 17 here

OmniPage 17 Professional Version

The professional version of OmniPage 17 is practically identical in all of the previous mentioned ways but does set itself apart from the standard version in that gives you the ability to do batch processing.

Batch processing allows you to schedule large volumes of files from folders or emails to be processed in real time. This allows you to leave OmniPage completely unattended to handle these large tasks. This is just one of the features that sets the professional version of OmniPage from the standard version.

The professional version is perfect for larger business organizations that require this sort of power and automation.

Learn more about OmniPage 17 Professional here

OmniPage for Mac Users

While OmniPage 17 is created only for PC users, Nuance has also created OmniPage Pro X for Macintosh. It's definitely worth checking out if Macs are your cup of tea.

OCR Freeware - Download Free OCR Software

I have been explaining how to edit a scanned document and what is required. Basically, you need software to translate the scanned document into an editable text document. In my last post about popular OCR software, I shared some possible OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software solutions. These are all highly recommended solutions, but they come with a price. So where do you find OCR freeware solutions?

OCR Freeware

The following are some links to download OCR freeware.

• http://www.simpleocr.com
• http://www.gnu.org/software/ocrad/ocrad.html

One thing to say is that these OCR freeware solutions may not do the job you are looking for them to do. Optical Character Recognition can work on many different levels. The general rule of thumb is that you get what you pay for. If you need something more advanced, you might want to check out OmniPage 16. However, for basic scanned document editting, the first link, SimpleOCR, should work just fine.

Another thing to mention is that the above are wonderful OCR freeware programs, some of the paid ones I listed in my last post about popular OCR software will offer free 30-day trials. Check those out too.

Popular Optical Character Recognition Programs

UPDATE: Nuance has released there latest version of OmniPage 16 OCR Software. OmniPage 16 is considered the world's leading OCR software solution. Check out my OmniPage 16 review.

In my last entry, I explained how to edit a scanned document. To refresh your memory on how to edit a scanned document, there is no way to edit a scanned document without the use of software that has Optical Character Recognition capabilities. With these OCR capabilties, software can transform text from a scanned document or image into an editable text document.

I did some searching and the common OCR software solutions for editting a scanned document are:

• http://www.abbyy.com
• http://www.nuance.com
• http://www.irislink.com

Most of these software solutions for editting a scanned document are a bit pricey. You are looking at a couple hundred dollars. The cheapest solution seems to be Readiris Pro Home Edition (approx. $130) from irislink.com.

I hope this has given you some insight on how to edit a scanned document. Best of luck to you!

How to Edit a Scanned Document

Let's look at how to edit a scanned document. As explained in the previous post, scanned documents are real life documents scanned into digital format. The common scanned document would probably be text scanned into an image format.

Say you had a typed up piece of paper and you wanted to get it on your computer in digital format and then edit the scanned document. You could use a scanner and scan it onto your computer. That would produce an image of the document, but how do you edit the scanned document image?

How to Edit a Scanned Document

The truth is that there is no way to extract, insert, or delete the text from the scanned document image without the use of special software with OCR capabilities. Meaning, you cannot simply select text from a scanned document because it is an image. You can edit the image in an image editor, but you cannot extract, insert, or delete text in the scanned document. So to go back to "OCR", OCR stands for "Optical Character Recognition". OCR can transform letters from a scanned image into a text document.

The solution on how to edit a scanned document is simple--use OCR software. I wish there was an easier way around editting a scanned document, but if you have a lot of scanned documents you have to edit, you will definitely get your money's worth from an OCR software solution.

One really great piece of OCR software is OmniPage 17. It's one of the latest up-to-date solutions out there today. You can check it out here. You can also see a review of it I wrote here.