OCR on MacOS?
March 23, 2017 9:35 AM Subscribe
I have some scans (currently TIFFs) of old newspapers I would like to OCR on my Mac. Can anyone recommend a good solution? I tried PDFPen but it seems to choke on some of the larger broadsheets. Is that my best option? Web services? Anything?
I was just cleaning up some OCR'ed PDFs this week!
Here, read this: https://blogs.adobe.com/documentcloud/hidden-gems-in-acrobat-dc-how-to-optimize-hidden-ocr-text/
posted by wenestvedt at 1:31 PM on March 23, 2017
Here, read this: https://blogs.adobe.com/documentcloud/hidden-gems-in-acrobat-dc-how-to-optimize-hidden-ocr-text/
posted by wenestvedt at 1:31 PM on March 23, 2017
I use FineReader (a paid program). I use it for a wide variety of scanned material (newspapers, books, journals, typewritten pages, etc.) and it's 99% good. The remaining 1% is that it uses a lot of memory which can make OCRing big things (like huge books off of archive.org, where the OCR is often questionable) hard on the system when you're trying to do other things at the same time.
I use it in conjunction with MacOS's Automator (which it has modules for) so I have a drag-and-drop solution for any files I come across that need instant OCRing. You can also set up a drop folder so that anything appearing in the folder is OCRed, exported to another folder, and then the original is deleted.
posted by Mo Nickels at 2:15 PM on March 23, 2017
I use it in conjunction with MacOS's Automator (which it has modules for) so I have a drag-and-drop solution for any files I come across that need instant OCRing. You can also set up a drop folder so that anything appearing in the folder is OCRed, exported to another folder, and then the original is deleted.
posted by Mo Nickels at 2:15 PM on March 23, 2017
By the way, I used to use Adobe Acrobat Pro but when I tried to pay for it I could not for the life of my find anything that wasn't a subscription, which I did not want to do.
posted by Mo Nickels at 2:18 PM on March 23, 2017
posted by Mo Nickels at 2:18 PM on March 23, 2017
While Adobe pushes the subscription model hard, you can in fact buy Acrobat Pro outright for $430. But if you just need it for this one task, subscribing for a month only costs you $25.
posted by kindall at 3:01 PM on March 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by kindall at 3:01 PM on March 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
Vuescan has a free trial: it does all kinds of scanning and OCR.
You can remove watermarks on scans for $50 from Hamrick Software If it works for you.
It's especially wonderful because they maintain drivers for almost every scanner or printer ever made. So if the latest OS update doesn't support your Weeblefizz 2000, You can test to see if Vuescan does.
posted by Jesse the K at 3:51 PM on March 23, 2017
You can remove watermarks on scans for $50 from Hamrick Software If it works for you.
It's especially wonderful because they maintain drivers for almost every scanner or printer ever made. So if the latest OS update doesn't support your Weeblefizz 2000, You can test to see if Vuescan does.
posted by Jesse the K at 3:51 PM on March 23, 2017
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posted by kindall at 11:04 AM on March 23, 2017