Q. What is OCR?
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is a technology that allows scanned text to be converted to an editable document. Normally, when you scan a document, all you get is an image file, that is, a picture, and most computer software cannot recognize the letters. Thus, you cannot edit the text, search through the text, change the formatting in a word processor, and so forth. When it comes to office documents, organizations usually need to be able to edit, index and search. But what to do with all those paper documents that we still use today or that have filled our archives? Here comes OCR - you just feed the documents into a scanner and process them through OCR software, thus converting them to electronic documents.
The OCR process involves a lot of advanced computer science, mathematical and topological algorithms but you don't need to worry about the specifics - Smart OCR hides the implementation details, giving you a convenient user interface.
It involves a lot of advanced computer science, mathematical and topological algorithms but you don't need to worry about any of these - Smart OCR will hide every implementation detail under the hood giving you a convenient user interface.
Q. How do I use SmartOCR?
Just follow these steps:
- Start SmartOCR
- First, feed an image into the program. Click one of the tree buttons in the upper left corner of the program: Quick Tasks, Scan or Open. Acquire an image from your scanner or an image file.
- The image will load in the Image View. Optionally, you might need to select a specific text area that you need recognized. Just click one of these buttons: Draw Text Area, Draw Image Area, or Draw Table Area and mark the appropriate areas. If you skip this step, the program select the area for you automatically.
- Click Recognize, and the software will process the image.
- The recognized text will open in the Text View, where you can make some final corrections to your recognized document before saving it.
- Click Save in the Image View to save the recognized text document as PDF, DOC, RTF, TXT or HTML.
Q. How do I convert paper documents to editable files?
Start Smart OCR, and click the Scan button. The scan wizard leads you through the scanning process. After you have scanned all the pages click Recognize and the software will process the images. The recognized text will open in the Text View, where you can make some final corrections to the document before saving. Click Save in the Image View in order to save the document as DOC, PDF, RTF, TXT or HTML.
If you don't have an scanner attached to your computer, you can scan your documents on another machine and then process the image files. See below.
Q. How do I convert scanned PDF documents to editable files?
Start Smart OCR and click Open. A new window will open that will let you navigate to and select your scanned PDF file. The file will load into the Image View. Click Recognize to start processing. When done, the recognized text will open in the Text View, where you can make some final corrections to the document before saving. Click Save in the Image View in order to save the document as DOC, PDF, RTF, TXT or HTML.
Q. How do I convert scanned image files to editable files?
Start Smart OCR and click Open. A new window will open that will let you navigate to and select your scanned BMP, JPEG, TIFF or GIFF file. The image will load into the Image View. Click Recognize to start processing. When done, the recognized text will open in the Text View, where you can make some final corrections to the document before saving. Click Save in the Image View in order to save the document as DOC, PDF, RTF, TXT or HTML.
Q. What resolution of the scanned documents does Smart OCR need?
What distinguishes Smart OCR among its competitors is its ability to recognize scanned text with very poor quality and low resolutions, such as faxed copies, documents that have been copied many times or screen shots. Typically 300 dpi will be more than enough to get excellent OCR results.
Q. Will Smart OCR handle a page that has been rotated when scanned?
Pages with rotated or skewed images often present OCR software with a challenge. Smart OCR implements a technology that automatically preprocesses your image to determine whether it has been rotated to a certain angle and then fixes it.
Q. Can I convert screenshots to editable text?
Yes, Smart OCR can handle images with low resolutions and even screenshots. You might need to manually mark the text region on the screenshot. Just open the screen shot image file in the program, then go to the Image View tab, click Draw Text Area and select the text for recognizing. Then click Recognize.
Q. I have a PDF file that contains scanned images instead of text. Can Smart OCR handle it?
Yes, our OCR software supports PDF as both input and output. You can convert scanned PDF documents to both searchable PDF and Microsoft Word DOC files.
Q. How do I uninstall the software?
A. Click Start, then click Control Panel, and double-click Add or Remove Programs.
In the Currently installed programs box, click the name of the program, and then click Remove.
Q. Can I convert multiple pages at once?
Yes, Smart OCR supports batch processing. Just open all your pages and click Recognize. The software will do its job unattended.
Q. I can't find my question here!
A. Please don't hesitate to ask us at
support@SmartOCR.com or fill out our feedback form.
For more questions:
support@SmartOCR.com