Abbyy FineReader 5.0 Pro OCR

Other products by Abbyy USA

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005B42L
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 9, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #13,606 in Software (See Bestsellers in Software)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #55 in

  Software > Business & Office > Document Management > Scanning & OCR

• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review
For optical character recognition (OCR) software to be more effective than hiring a fast typist, it has to be very accurate. It also helps if it can recognize a range of languages. FineReader Pro 5.0 comes with support for more than a hundred languages, although it spell checks only around 25 of the more common ones. It also recognizes programming languages like Java and Pascal.

The quality of recognition of the English texts tested was high--selected texts, from magazines, newspapers, and printouts, required little editing. FineReader Pro 5.0 saves images from the source documents as well as text, recognizes formatting such as column breaks, and will recognize tables. You can send scanned material to the clipboard for pasting into any editor you choose, or send it directly to Microsoft Word, Lotus Word Pro, Corel WordPerfect, Sun StarWriter, or Microsoft Excel. It can also be sent straight to e-mail, or saved as HTML.

The more advanced points of FineReader Pro 5.0, such as fine-tuning scanning quality for optimum results and managing tables accurately, require a little practice to master, and the interface is a bit on the cluttered side. However, for standard OCR tasks, FineReader Pro 5.0 is a useful and efficient application. --Sandra Vogel

Amazon.com Product Description
Abbyy Fine Reader 5.0 Pro is optical character recognition (OCR) software recommended for home use. A built-in editor lets users edit the image layout manually. Edit recognized text while looking at an image of the source text in the Zoom window. The built-in spell checker will search text for misspelled words in mere seconds. Version 5.0 supports batch document processing allowing users to save source images, batch options, and recognized texts in the same folder. The system supports direct launch from Microsoft Word and background recognition. Users may also train the system to recognize new characters.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FineReader 5.0 beats Omnipage 11 and Textbridge 2k, July 12, 2001

By	ScanMan (California USA) - See all my reviews

I scan books that are in the public domain, which is a demanding task for OCR software. The bottom line is that the Abbyy FineReader Pro v5.0 is THE BEST OCR software on the market right now. It far surpasses Scansoft's Textbridge Millennium. The only thing that even gives FineReader Pro 5.0 any competition is Scansoft's OmniPage Pro 11, but FineReader is still far better. Since Scansoft bought out Textbridge (from Xerox) and bought out OmniPage (from Caere), you would think they could develop a superior product, but that's not so. Omnipage appears to be billed as an upgrade to Textbridge (I'm guessing that Scansoft is sending Textbridge to the graveyard). Scansoft claims in an advertisement that they spent a YEAR combining the programs. However, Scansoft did not even include rudimentary features of Textbridge in OmniPage 11. For instance, if you scan a book two pages at a time with the binding flat against the scanner (this is very common for older books that need to remain intact), Textbridge Millennium could split apart the pages using a dual-page mode. This was an extremely helpful if not critical feature for scanning books. However, this feature does not exist in OmniPage 11. FineReader on the other hand, can do this and more. It works great with Auto Document Feeders and it is far more accurate than OmniPage 11. Finally, FineReader's error/spell checker is once again far superior to OmniPage 11. The only single advantage that OmniPage 11 has over FineReader 5.0 is that it can import Adobe PDF documents for further OCR work. Otherwise FineReader Pro 5.0 is the way to go.

Also, regarding a former review, FineReader allows you to exclude optional-hyphens in the output file. Check in the advanced section of the output format. Including them is not a mistake. It's actually quite impressive that the program knows those that are optional-hyphens and those that are not.

46 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome., May 19, 2001

By	S Smyth (Belfast, Co Antrim United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Not a term I use too often, but prior to getting my hands on Abbyy's FineReader 5.0 Pro I was always under the impression that OCR software was a joke; an opinion bolstered by mine and others' experience of applications like Text-Bridge. Not FineReader. This stuff is in its ability to convert scanned documents into text files that can then be formatted in your word-processor. With FineReader 5.0 Pro I can do what would take me over a week - assuming I didn't go loopy in the process of transcribing it - in under an hour; converting about 20,000.00 words worth, into a useable MS-Word or RTF file.

FineReader makes very few mistakes. Some worth mentioning are the following:

Text hyphenated in order to allow a word to wrap in the original: This will give word splits with optional-hyphen symbols that will have to taken out individually in your word-processor file.

Quotation marks will default to text-editor style without any left and right handing: This can be corrected globally in a given document by ( in MS- Word ) using the replace all function and entering the normal quotation marks in the find and replace boxes. This applies to both single and double quotes.

Text set in columns with cross-column footnotes will create a line or two of rubbish, but the columns will be successfully interpreted as a single one in your word-processor document, providing you remember to save the processed file without any formatting. I reckon you should save all processed files without retaining the original formatting to make life easier.

You can also output a processed file as a PDF and an HTML page. Be sure to consider the settings for these export options, otherwise you can end up with an enormous PDF or an HTML page that won't work in older browsers.

I would also encourage a user to dispense with all the Wizard toolbars and get familiar with the commands via the menu bar. This is a better and more flexible way to work, and potentially less confusing. And buy a decent scanner, too. Epson do good ones such as their perfection series.

If you want an OCR application that really works, get FineReader 5.0 Pro. You'll recoup its incredibly modest cost in one job.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It works. Period., November 24, 2001

By	James J. Gerbino (Pensacola, FL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Unlike most OCR programs this one works. Toss out your bundled OCR software that came with your scanner. It only provides you with an opportunity to practice your typing skills. FineReader 5.0 Recognizes and learns from it's mistakes.

And it doesn't cost nearly what some other, less capable programs do.

One note... it does have some issues with Windows XP. There is a 22meg service pack available from the publisher's US website along with a registry hack to make it behave. I have used it successfully with Win98SE, WinME, and XP though.

Enjoy!