The Gaming Den

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Tue Oct 20, 2009 6:25 am

I'm looking for a good (preferrably free) Optical character reader. Have tried simpleOCR and it doesn't cut it.

Cheers

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Tue Oct 20, 2009 11:51 am

GOCR?

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Tue Oct 20, 2009 12:36 pm

I think simple OCR is the only one I've ever used.

What are you trying to read?

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Oct 20, 2009 2:07 pm

I just used the one that came with my scanner. Are you trying to OCR something that is already in digital format?

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 7:07 am

I'm trying to convert the text of a photo/text page scan so that I can alter the text without having to retype the whole damn thing. I tried both a direct jpg scan of the page in question plus a pdf (from a scan) I have of the file as well. SimpleOCR really wasn't recognizing many characters. It certainly was looking like I was going to spend as much time fixing the text as I would have retyping it. I'm putting together powerpoints for teaching and I want to rearrange the material. So far I've either retyped it or done hundreds of little cut and pastes, both of which is way too time consuming for a lazy teacher like me

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 4:29 pm

So you have an image with text on it, and you want to change the text of the image without changing the image by hand?

If that is it, OCR wasn't made for that. It recognizes characters and can give you text, but won't change them.

If you just want the text form the image itself, I think there is something online that does some OCR, but not in a big way. One of those websites that tells you what font something is in am image, and another. Not sure if it exists or is buried in Google, but you could search for "convert image to text" in Google. Just look for the page with free OCR.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 5:50 pm

I used OmniPage for a while, but that's not exactly free. It worked fairly well.