I have OCR software that came with my scanner. Have used it a couple of times and it depends on how you set it up and the quality of the document as to how accurate a result you get.
Wendy
PLEASE SCAN AT 300-600 DPI FOR RESTORATION PURPOSES. THANK YOU!
The other good one is called Omnipage, if I remember rightly.
You can download a trial version of Finereader to try before you decide whether to buy it.
The OCR programs that come bundled with scanners are usually not as accurate as these two.
When you test the program, try it with tables as well as ordinary text; tables are the thing that most programs make a mess of (and even Finereader doesn't handle them too well).
I find with OCR software that I spend more time proof reading and correcting the errors of text that the software 'thought' was correct, but ended up as gobbeldegook, than actually typing it in myself.
Avatar is my Gt Grandfather
Researching:
FRANKLIN (Harrow/Pinner 1700 to 1850); PURSGLOVE (ALL Southern counties of England); POOLE (Tetbury/Malmesbury and surrounding areas of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire (1650 to 1900); READ London/Suffolk
That's true if you use a poor program or the quality of the text is very poor - e.g. a very faint fax. Don't expect it to read handwritten text, though.
If the quality of the text is reasonable, then you shouldn't have to spend much time doing corrections. The program should have a spellchecker, which will do most of the corrections for you.
Just checking the Abby site; ABBYY FineReader 9.0 Professional Edition, the one I have, costs €159, which is very expensive for private use (mine is for business use, so it was tax-deductible).
However, if you don't have too many documents to do, the 14-day free trial may be sufficient. I don't remember Abby's free trial conditions; I tried at least 2 programs before buying, and one of them only allowed me to do about 3 pages, but I forget which one.
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