Trying to OCR Scan Pages and Edit Content - Which Application Would Work Best?

[Deactivated] on 19/08/2022 - 23:13

Hi all,

Could anyone please kindly recommend an OCR application (for Windows) that's really good in being able to scan a manual document, detect editable font and allow for edit of content.

My dilemma is that I have to edit quite a number of pages of various SOP's and no one can find the original file so all I have is the scanned pages which are in good condition and only a few years old. The font doesn't appear to be any of the included default fonts. I have tried a few OCR edit applications so far (trials) and they either don't pick up every area that I need to edit despite re-scanning, aligning etc or it converts the portions it does pick up to Arial or Times New Roman.

I'm thinking the only option would be to try and upload a sample of the font to various services that can detect fonts and hope I can get one close enough.

I can always re-write said pages but there are quite a number of them and it will take hours, I was hoping that there's an OCR application that is known to be good for detecting fonts and allow you to edit them accordingly.

Thus far I have tried the following

  • Foxit Reader
  • Adobe Acrobat
  • Wondershare pdfelement

Any help would be highly appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

Education & Work

Comments

  • AustriaBargain on 20/08/2022 - 02:18
    +1

    You don't need the same fonts, unless any of them are part of the branding. Just pick a font that fits. Or better yet, recreate it in InDesign instead of spending time editing scanned pages. Give sections proper section names and an automatic index.

  • Melencir on 20/08/2022 - 05:36

    OneNote? Google drive? Or you're looking for a third party service that you can pay to do the job?

  • rickxs on 20/08/2022 - 05:47

    was just reading this at ghacks (https://www.ghacks.net/2022/08/19/mozilla-plans-to-add-text-… ) read further down for windows
    also has links for Screen Translator, Capture2Text, or ShareX.

  • Italkdigital on 20/08/2022 - 06:21

    So wouldn't you get the text first by scanning software then as example say in Word turn the text into whatever font you want

    Anyway my Samsung Note 10 mobile easily grabs text out of photos as long as the text is correctly aligned close to 90 degrees, other software I use is I think either Microsoft lens or maybe it's Google lens, well there apps in my phone

  • 7ekn00 on 20/08/2022 - 08:59

    Can use your phone with either of the "Lens" software (MS or Google)! Am also assuming this free deal is also for phone: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/719912

    On Windows you can use Office Lens by Microsoft (it retains formatting and does OCR) ;)

    Next step down on Windows is Nanonets and FreeOCR, good OCR, not that good for keeping layout :/

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