I just bought this app and used it on a typed letter. I find that the
lighting is critical. after a third try in different lightings, I got near
perfect OCR results. I found it best to put the white letter on a darker
background for contrast, but I don't know if that was actually necessary.
the voice directions for getting a good image are interesting too. A little
weird at first, but they eventually focus you in on a good image. the image
stabilization that kicks in after clicking the "take picture" button seems
to work well too.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Esther" <mori...@mac-access.net>
To: "Mac OSX & iOS Accessibility" <mac-access@mac-access.net>
Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 10:08 AM
Subject: Re: Prizmo version 2 iOS app is released and on sale for $5.99
Hi Josh and Chris,
I never bothered to get additional voices to use the Voice reader within
the Prizmo app, since I could use VoiceOver to review the material. The
OCR functions are only meant to temporarily store results. Version 1 of
Prizmo did have the Voice Reader function, too. It is still going to be
easier for many people to use the StandScan Pro to quickly take pictures
of documents to OCR, but I think that many more who found it difficult to
use Prizmo freehand to take pictures of documents will find this possible.
It is still not a replacement for the KNFB reader setup, as I understand
it, for automatically adjusting everything when you take a picture.
The voice activated picture taking feature of the first version is gone.
So I am using a split tap to activate the shutter. They've added some kind
of stabilizer mode for the process of starting the manual picture taking
when you activate the shutter button above the home button, which is
announced as "Take Picture". You don't just get an immediate shutter
opening and closing. I did like the voice activation feature of the first
version, where you could just say "Take Picture", but this is more
discreet, and doesn't have to drop VoiceOver's volume so you can get a
good voice trigger. I now put one finger on the "Take Picture" button and
raise the iPhone, then tap the screen with another finger to trigger the
shutter and picture taking.
While I can review the scanned material in the Prizmo app, I prefer to
read the results as converted documents in another app. The export
options have an "open in" function that lets to send the file easily to
other applications, including apps like Dropbox or, VoiceDream reader. So
I'm doing most of my reading in the VoiceDream reader app, with the
InfoVox voices I purchased for that app. I guess that if I needed to use
the translate option, which I believe requires an internet connection, and
read text in another language, I might use in-app purchases of voices for
Prizmo. But I think this is more of a convenience for people who don't
already have VoiceOver turned on. The voices are the Infovox/iVox voices
from the Acapela group, but include a couple of voices that aren't
available for the Mac, like Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. (These are all
available in VoiceDream reader, along with a few Neospeech English
voices.). Originally, I couldn't figure out why the Chinese
and Japanese voices were added to version 2 of Prizmo when the app
doesn't OCR these languages (unlike TextGrabber), but then I realized it
was for translation support.
HTH. Cheers,
Esther
On May 15, 2013, at 1:39 AM, Josh Gregory <joshkar...@gmail.com> wrote:
Yes, if you have no voices in the voice reader, you'll need to purchase
some first. I have the same problem and unfortunately at the current time
I do not have enough money in my iTunes account to buy voices.
Sent from my iPhone
On May 15, 2013, at 7:27 AM, "chris h (sky)" <challswor...@sky.com>
wrote:
Hello all
just got this wonderful update to the app.
Haven't tried the Ocr function yet but have tried all I can do with the
interface so far with excellent results.
One issue I have is with the Voice Reader feature. It tells me I can
type or paste some text, then click the play button. But when I click
the play button nothing happens. Do I need to buy more voices?
On the whole a wonderful update and I can't wait to put it through its
paces with my posts etc.
Chris.
On 15/05/2013 05:50, Esther wrote:
Hi All,
Sorry for the last post that only clipped the price and URL information
of version 2 of the Prizmo app. I meant to add a few other
enthusiastic comments. Not only is it easier to do an OCR, because if
VoiceOver is on, and the page size has been selected, the app will
actually tell you when you are too far to the left or right or need to
move your camera, but you can export the OCR results in either PDF or
text and use the "open in" function for compatible apps. Since I have
VoiceDream reader, I can open the exported text in that app, and to go
along with Prizmo's support of different languages, I can read the text
in InfoVox voices for different languages. Also, although I'm not using
this facility, you can adjust the font size of the text that you've
exported either as PDF or Text format when you read in VoiceDream
Reader, so this is really cool if you're a low-vision user.
So to follow up on my original post, if you've been sent scanned PDF
images of documents from some bulk email distribution copying machine,
you can read that perfectly well with the Prizmo app -- even on iOS
devices without good cameras like the earlier iPod Touch models or
earlier generation iPads. And the export function works to put text
into Dropbox, too. Plus you can store these documents in VoiceDream
Reader, and read multiple language outputs, and use large fonts and
highlighting.
Since Prizmo supports a whole set of new languages, you could probably
even use this to read documents in some languages without supported
voices, by copying the OCR text results to clipboard, and pasting into
a translating app like Google Translate just to us the voice support
for reading other languages. I think someone asked about Hebrew voice
support on the Mac, and that's one of the text languages Prizmo can
OCR, and that Google Translate can read aloud. I'll have to fool
around with the Russian language download for Prizmo and try it out.
Cheers,
Esther
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