Online OCR

I scanned 17 pages of a document recently, saving these as jpgs and sent them to a friend. Then the request came for a editable version of this same 17 pages because some information needed to be added and some deleted.

Did I have to rescan them an use the OCR option to make them into editable text? Now this would have been easily done if I had a scanner with a feeder, but mine is a flatbed and so pages had to be redone one by one, 17 times. Not feeling particularly energised to redo scanning procedure, I went to the internet and came across several online OCR services.

Most of these online OCR services can convert text documents in JPG, TIF, PDF formats into editable documents -- either in MS Word, RTF or some other word processor. Some are paid services and some free or free for a certain number of pages. I tried several services but found that most did not do columns very well with the exception of

OCR Terminal at http://www.ocrterminal.com/

This services gives you 20 pages per month free and a very reasonable price for each page exceeding this 20. The conversion to editable text is fast and very accurate. Best of all this online OCR managed to preserve the page format of the original and there was very little or no additional editing required. Registration is need to use the service but the interface and ease of use makes this service a pleasure to use.


Other online OCR programs tried were:

OnLine OCR http://www.onlineocr.net/

OCR Grid http://www.ocrgrid.org/online-ocr.html

Cvision http://www.cvisiontech.com/online-conversion/general/main.html

ABBYY’s FineReader Online http://www.finereaderonline.com/