Hi Esther, Once again I have to thank you for your incredible knowledge of the iPhone and its workings.
I also prefer Text Grabber and I have asked for a StandScan Pro for my birthday, which is two weeks from tomorrow. No need to send presents. :) Have you tried Text Grabber with the StandScan Pro? Chuck On Mar 14, 2:49 pm, Esther <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Brett, Matthew, David, Chuck, and Others, > > The problem is that none of the current iOS OCR programs can input > from a PDF file, so the current workaround involves displaying the PDF > on the screen and doing a screen capture. Then, you need to use an > OCR program that lets you input from your camera roll. David gave the > steps for Prizmo (appended below my post). However, if you really > want to do an OCR from PDF files, I'd recommend using TextGrabber + > Translator by ABBYY instead, because it will involve fewer steps, and > also give you slightly better OCR results if you work from screen > captures. > > Remember that if you are taking screen shots that your screen curtain > must be turned off, and your display brightness must be turned up at > least above 30 percent. Also, if you have difficulty taking a screen > capture by pressing the Home and power buttons at the same time, try > starting to press the Home button slightly before the power button, > but make sure you do not release it until you can release both > buttons, and hear the camera shutter sound that indicates a successful > screen capture. > > TextGrabber does very good OCR, and can process multiple languages -- > even more than Prizmo. However, it is more sensitive to exact > alignment of images than Prizmo, which is why I don't recommend it if > you are trying to OCR from a camera shot, and you are not practiced in > taking pictures for OCR without vision. Neither Prizmo nor > TextGrabber requires you to orient your images with the top of the > page up, and will work with upside-down or 90 degree rotated images; > they just won't give good results if you hold your camera skewed. > However, if document alignment is not an issue, because you're working > from a screen capture or can use an external stand to align your > pages, then TextGrabber works well, and you can set it up to OCR your > camera roll images faster than you can with Prizmo. > > Configure TextGrabber by opening the app, and then flicking to the > "Settings VF" button at the top of the screen, and double tapping. On > the "Settings" screen, flick right to "Enable Crop", which is the > second entry under the "Photo" heading. By default this is set with > "Switch button, on". If so, double tap to ensure this is set to > "Switch button, off". Since cropping images requires interactive > sighted adjustment which you won't use, and since your PDF images > should already be selected to maximize the content over the screen > area, you don't want to use this setting. Turning it off wlll allow > you to skip processing steps, which you cannot do with Prizmo. If > you want to add OCR recogniztion languages, you can double tap > "Recognition Languages" and select additional languages from the > alphabetical list of languages by double tapping, then double tap the > "Done" button in the top right corner to exit the "Recognition > Languages" screen. Exit the "Settings" screen by double tapping the > "Done" button in the top right corner. > > Now when you want to OCR an image, double tap the "Album" button on > the main screen and select your image fromt the camera roll. I > navigate by moving to the last element with a four finger tap on the > bottom of the screen and then a flick left to "Album". On the camera > roll, I also usually move to the last element on the screen, and flick > left, to get the last image. > > The nice thing about this TextGrabber configuration is that once you > double tap to select an image from your camera roll, you just need to > wait a few seconds, and the app immediately processes the image, and > you'll hear "Camera" button -- i.e., the "back" button for returning > to the camera screen -- when it's done. You can just flick right to > read the OCR'd results. If the OCR process takes a while, the > intermediate processing screen will say "recognition" if you move to > the last element in the bottom right corner. With Prizmo, you have to > keep double tapping the "Next" button in the top right corner to take > it through the prcessing steps to reach the final result. After > viewing the OCR results, I usually just double tap the "menu" button > in the bottom right corner of the screen, then flick left to "copy" > and double tap. Or, you could email the results to yourself. > > One final comment: ABBYY now has loads of iOS apps out there that > sound as though they might be the one you want, so it's very > confusing. The correct app to use for this is: > • TextGrabber + Translator (currently $4.99) by > ABBYYhttps://itunes.apple.com/us/app/textgrabber/id438475005?mt=8 > > The other thing is that the price for the TextGrabber app has been > bouncing around like crazy in recent months, with high values of > $14.99, and a few occasional low values of $0.99. Just two days ago > this was $5.99. It has been as high as $19.99. I no longer bother to > announce when this app goes down in price, since most people won't use > this app. Maybe this will change with the StandScan Pro. > > There's an earlier write-up of this information in my comment to an > AppleVis forum post: > • Re: Prizmo > Questionhttp://www.applevis.com/forum/ios-ios-app-discussion/prizmo-question > > That includes the instructions for both Prizmo and TextGrabber. > > HTH. Cheers, > > Esther > > > > > > > > > >>>> On Mar 13, 4:19 pm, David Chittenden <[email protected]> wrote: > > >>>>> You need to use an OCR package. Voice Dream Reader is not an OCR > > >>>>> package. > > > >>>>> Prizmo can OCR images from your camera roll. For this solution to > > >>>>> work, you need to get the PDF page image into the camera roll. > > > >>>>> 1) Open the PDF file. I do this from directly in mail. > > > >>>>> 2) Press home and power buttons at the same time to take a screen > > >>>>> shot of the first page of the image. The screen shot will be the last > > >>>>> photo in your photo album. If there are more than one page in the PDF > > >>>>> file: > > > >>>>> 3) use a three finger flick up to advance the PDF image to the next > > >>>>> page. Follow steps 2 and 3 until pictures have been captured of the > > >>>>> entire PDF. > > > >>>>> 4) Open Prizmo and select text. > > >>>>> 5) Select the OCR from image option. > > > >>>>> 6) Remember how many images you captured and count back that many > > >>>>> images, or start with an empty photo book. Follow the prompts to OCR > > >>>>> the images and save the resulting text files. You will get a separate > > >>>>> file for each page. > > > >>>>> David Chittenden, MSc, MRCAA > > >>>>> Email: [email protected] > > >>>>> Mobile: +64 21 2288 288 > > >>>>> Sent from my iPhone > > > >>>>> On 14/03/2013, at 11:06, Matthew Campbell <[email protected]> > > >>>>> wrote: > > > >>>>>> Hello all. > > >>>>>> I'm just wondering if anyone has found a way to take an image based > > >>>>>> pdf file and turn it in to text from an IOS device? I've got text > > >>>>>> books from the college that come as image based pdf files and would > > >>>>>> like to be able to read them on my iPhone 5 or iPad 2 instead of the > > >>>>>> computer. I can do this, but that requires me to use a computer > > >>>>>> first to OCR the images of the pages and then save them as text or > > >>>>>> rtf files. It'd be nice to skip this step if possible, and would > > >>>>>> allow me to study from an IOS device more effectively. > > >>>>>> Does VoiceDream maybe do this? > > >>>>>> Thanks for any opinions and suggestions. > > >>>>>> Matthew Campbell. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VIPhone" Google Group. To search the VIPhone public archive, visit http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/viphone?hl=en. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VIPhone" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
