working with ocr sotfware to save time
Author: webee | Filed under: design for print, tutorials
working as a designer within a quite small advertising company has pros an cons.
and although we manage some great accounts, like emporiki bank and nike, we also have smaller customers with smaller marketing departments (if any 
).
in my experience these smaller companies always have “special requests” and provide us with fewer materials.
today i’ve had to do a print layout for a company that has provided me with only some paper sheets stuffed with a loooot of information. and couldn’t give any electronic support for this information.
now i had 2 options:
- i should either rewrite all the information
- use some OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software to scan and import all the data.
within this post, i’ll show you what’s my favorite OCR software and how to use it.
i’m talking about abbyy finereader 7.0, and what i liko the most about it is that you can import really complicated schemes, chartes and tables.
1. after you open your scanned file, you should set the language the information is.
2. now, you have to push the read button and wait…
3. this is the final step: save and send doc
if you want to use it in indesign, here’s how you can import excel tables to indesign, import excel charts in indesign, and how to import word elements in indesign.
if you need more help with this, please post a comment 
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comment “working with ocr sotfware to save time”
does this really work? all the ocr software I used so far was utter pants. most “e”-s were turned into “c”-s not to mention all the “i”-s and “l”-s that were mixed up.
hi jez
and yes it really works, at least on romanian language. i have to admit i didn’t try it in english. but romanian has more complicated special caracters so it should work on english too.
it’s not great with the tables but….
if you only have to work with text… that’s really ok.
so you are saying it is probably software related and not a scanner thing? I got some brother mfc 7820N network printer/scanner and it’s letter recognition is so crap, I am pulling out my hair when in need to scan loads of text. I end up sending it over as PDF to my study mates and let them have the writing fun… the finereader you mentioned, it is freely available?
yes jez, it’s an independent software. unfortunately it’s not freeware but it has a good trial period.