Optical Character Recognition Software
Posted: June 21, 2010Q: I’m trying to scan a document to a Word file, I think I need OCR software, what do you recommend?
A: There are a couple of good choices for OCR – the least expensive accurate package appears to be ABBYY FineReader Express, which sells for $49.99. They have a professional edition as well, which is more full-featured, but I have always just used the express version, and been quite happy with it, as the pro edition costs $400.
You’ll notice on the ABBYY web page that they sell a product called ABBYY PDF Transformer. I don’t recommend that product, but rather a product called “PDFCreator” or “Cute PDF”. Both of these products are excellent substitutes for the ABBYY product, so you don’t need to spend the extra money.
