OmniPage 16 Professional Review

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(More customer reviews)I purchased OmniPage 16 Professional to serve as my workhorse OCR application. I tested it out on 30 pages of typed address labels and a hundred+ page phone book. OmniPage promises far more than it delivers. As a workhorse, it's at best very hit-or-miss. For me, its' a flop.
For starters, it randomly crashes. That's enough to turn me off of any product, but that's just the beginning.
When the application runs, it doesn't run well. For example, OCR software needs to figure out where the text is and in what form (columns, tables, etc). OmniPage obviously put a lot of effort into this capability but to no avail. I still needed to manually adjust each and every scanned image. For example, in the phonebook test, OmniPage created polygons for data columns and neatly excluded random blocks of phone numbers. It would have been nice if I could specify the number of columns and whether or not a rectangle would suffice to cover a column. I found no such option. OmniPage does allow the user to create their own custom scanning zones - and they work great - so long as the text in each image is lined up in exactly the same position across all images. I made a concerted effort to make this happen, above and beyond what one might expect from staff employees, and I still found it impossible to do consistently. After spending a few FULL days experimenting with different settings, and manually configuring a few hundred pages, I got the message.
Another indicator that the OmniPage folks don't actually use their own software is in the OCR Proofreader interface design. At random intervals, the image view shows a split screen. Such a feature serves no useful purpose. The split screen bears no relation to the imaged zone, and it hinders proofreading. More annoying, however, is the fact that the "Add" (to training file) button remains enabled even when pressing it results in an error box message. This "feature" requires the user to click the "OK" button, click the "Resume" button, and then re-enter their last correction. Simply disabling the button for the duration of the edit would suffice. Lastly, this interface lacks an "Undo" button. I certainly don't want my training files to remember my mistakes. OmniPage does offer a different interface to review training data, but there's no fast way to find a recent error, and all I really needed was an "Undo" button.
I checked their website for software updates, but these appear to be rare, so my hopes aren't high. I could list many more issues, but these should suffice. While the features offered look great in writing, don't be fooled. I won't buy OCR software again until I see it in action with a sample of my own projects. No one should.

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Item #: 41534F. OmniPage Professional allows business professionals to achieve new levels of productivity by eliminating the manual reproduction of documents. Precision OCR analysis, advanced layout detection, Logical Form Recognition (LFR) technology, and advanced security features quickly turn office documents and forms into over 30 different PC applications for editing, searching and sharing. Custom workflows handle large volumes of documents with a click of the mouse or the push of a button on your scanner or All-in-One device. Robust tools enable you to print to PDF, turn text documents into audio books and add digital signatures to your electronic documents. In addition, the award winning, ScanSoft PDF Create! and PDF Converter programs are included providing a complete and unmatched PDF solution.
Product DescriptionScanSoft OmniPage Professional - ( v. 16 ) - complete packageCategory: UtilitiesSubcategory: Utilities - OCR softwareVersion: 16License Type: Complete packageLicense Qty: 1 userLicense Pricing: StandardLanguage(s): EnglishLocalization: United StatesPlatform: WindowsDistribution Media: CD-ROMPackage Type: RetailOS Required: Microsoft Windows XP 64-bit Edition, Microsoft Windows 2000 SP2 or later, Microsoft Windows XP SP2 or later, Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows Vista (64-bit versions) Customers also search for: Discount ScanSoft OmniPage Professional - (V. 16) - Complete Package - 1 User - CD - Win - English - United States, Buy ScanSoft OmniPage Professional - (V. 16) - Complete Package - 1 User - CD - Win - English - United States Wholesale ScanSoft OmniPage Professional - (V. 16) - Complete Package - 1 User - CD - Win - English - United States, 0780420117297, E709A-G00-16.0, Software Suites

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