Product Reviews

If you have a scanner, you probably already have OCR software to allow you to scan documents and turn them into editable text. However, the software included will probably be a lightweight version that does not offer all the functions you need. The answer may be OmniPage Pro at the special upgrade price.

You can run OmniPage directly from the Start menu, using the OCR Wizard. This asks you questions, then carries out OCR based on your requirements. You can then proof-read the OCR results using the Check Recognition feature which operates like a spellchecker

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and picks out suspect words.

OmniPage will also run from an application, such as Microsoft Word, with the Acquire Text option added to the File menu.

OmniPage Pro 8.0 can handle documents ranging from faxes to magazine pages, and can compensate for skewed, crooked or poor-quality pages. The True Page feature retains the document's original layout, including columns, graphics, tables and font effects. However, mixed-format pages are not always handled how you'd expect, so you may have to manually mark up the original scan to tell OmniPage which bits to treat as graphics.

Because OmniPage Pro uses Windows' 32-bit multi-threading, you can scan, OCR and edit simultaneously. OmniPage can recognise multiple languages on a single page and offers support for 11 Western tongues.

At the full asking price, OmniPage Pro is very expensive, even when you take into account its full set of features. If you have a scanner, though, it's very likely that you already own a 'lite' version of an OCR package, which makes OmniPage Pro a reasonable option at £99. It's still not as cheap as TextBridge Pro 98 (Issue 79, page 44), though.