ABBYY Finereader 10 Professional Edition

ABBYY Finereader 10 is a smart OCR and PDF conversion application which converts PDF files, paper documents and digital photographs into a search-able and editable format. Let's have a look at the features of the optical character recognition software.

Key features

With 186 language recognition, including 39 languages dictionary support, it is a powerful tool which saves the time of the professionals, who need to process thousands of documents. Its auto-detect language tool helps in converting documents effectively and accurately. Also, you can make a custom dictionary by adding your own list of words. It has a simple interface and easy-to-understand editing option that make it easy to use. The interface contains the basic conversion tasks and is grouped into Microsoft Word and PDF based on the type of conversion. The main screen has two parts -one contains the PDF or the image and the other part contains the editable format.

With its recognition technique, the software gives good results by converting the complicated documents layout which includes tables, photos and signatures. To get better results, you can specify the table properties also. Its Adaptive Document Recognition Technology (ADRT) helps in retaining the original layout and formatting attributes like headers and footers, bullets and numbering, and fonts of the document making it more accurate.

With the new 3G camera OCR technology, the ABBYY Finereader recognizes images taken from mobile, scanner or digital camera and performs image pre-processing techniques like straightening the curved lines and 3D distortion correction. It also provides manual editing tools using which you can crop or rotate the images or correct the blurred images. You can also split images into different pages, either horizontally or vertically. While converting the colored images into black and white, it automatically adjust the contrast to get the better result. It is integrated with the Microsoft Office applications. To scan, convert or open the document or image you can launch it from within the Microsoft Office. You can save the documents in various file formats like txt, html, pdf, MS Word XML, doc, xls, rtf.

ABBYY Finereader 10 also includes a bonus application -ABBYY screenshot reader. It is a small and useful application which captures screenshots and then converts them into the editable format. It is helpful when you want to convert a part of the web pages, PDF or images or any other document.

Performance

We performed 3 tests on the software. We tried to convert a PDF file into editable format and it converted it accurately, that did not require any manual editing. Then we tried to convert a scanned magazine page which contained the text and images. It recognized both text and images but manual editing was needed, since it was not able to recognize certain symbols and spaces. Next test was barcode reading. We used an image containing barcode and we got our result correctly.

Bottomline: ABBYY Finereader 10 saves a lot of time and effort in creating editable format of documents. Also if you do not have a scanner then use the mobile or digital camera to take picture of the document and convert to editable text file.