Hello Deborah,
Thanks for the information on the older version of OmniPage. I an
using 15 and the information that you posted is the most I have ever
read concerning OmniPage.
I have been using 15 since it became available, but to be honest, I
have struggled with it for quite a while until I can use it
reasonably well now, but I still have a lot to learn with this OCR software.
Please do let us know about OmniPage Pro 17 and is it really
necessary to upgrade from 15?
Any additional information that you can provide will be enormously appreciated!
Lennie
At 06:58 PM 6/4/2009, you wrote:
I am supposed to be getting 17 as soon as my employer finishes the
paperwork. However, I used to be the tech support lead for OmniPage, so I
know the older versions well.
Meanwhile, for those of you with 14, 15 or 16, try these ideas:
* Delete or rename the JAWS scripts. They are for OmniPage 10 and will not
work as well as the default scripts for using the program.
* If OmniPage doesn't seem to work with your scanner, stop trying and scan
using another program. OmniPage just calls the scanner manufacturer's
third-party drivers, and manufacturers often make crummy ones. Scan and save
the results as TIFF.
* Scan at 300 DPI with 100% scaling in black and white. OmniPage help,
written by marketing and not tech support, claims other settings work, but
the OCR engine is tuned to give best quality at those settings. OmniPage
defaults to this -- most other software does not.
* The main screen has a text view and an image view. Turn off the image
view. Poke around the Alt-V View menu to turn off anything else you don't
want.
* The main screen is full of toollbars and buttons. Don't worry if JFW
cannot read them, you can do everything through the menus or workflows.
* Use alt-P to pull up the Process menu. From there choose Get Page and
from that submenu, you can select whether to open a tiff file or scan a
document. You cannot open an image file from the normal File Open dialog
box.
* Wait around for all the pages to load if you are bringing in an image file
or start scanning, if that's how you are bringing a file in to OmniPage.
* When the file is loaded (it's sometimes hard to tell when that's done) do
alt-P for Process, then choose perform OCR. You'll get a menu of choices
which you can enable or disable. You'll have to keep pulling it up each time
you toggle any setting. When everything is the way you want it, select start
-- this is all from submenus, not dialog boxes.
* When OCR begins, a spell checker is also run as a separate thread. You can
check spelling, which is pretty accessible or skip the step by closing the
spell checker. You can close the spell checker by tabbing to Close because
the spell checker steals the focus. This will not abort the OCR.
* It can be difficult to know when the OCR is done. I just run it overnight.
* When it completes, do Alt-P, for process, choose Export results and go
through the menus the same way you did for OCR. You will be toggling
settings, pulling up the menu again for each setting change. But it's all
accessible with boxes either checked or unchecked. You will need to select
Start to actually make anything happen.
* Take the time to learn from the Help and trial and error how to use the
work flows and batch manager. The dialogs are all accessible in 13, 14, 15
and 16 -- I use this program every day at work and know this for sure. If
you set up a batch job properly, it can run overnight on a huge PDF or Tiff,
and you can wake up to a new book ready to read.
* If your version of OmniPage has no batch jobs or workflows you have the
scaled-down trial version that gets sent out free with scanners. It has poor
OCR and should be avoided!
--Debee
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