Introduction - ScanSoft M118 - WorkCentre B/W Laser User Manual

Chapter 2

Introduction

You probably use your computer for business correspondence, preparing
reports, handling data and an ever-increasing number of other uses. The
challenge is that, in spite of the digital revolution, certain sources of
information still circulate in printed, paper form and cannot be used
immediately in a computer.
For example, if you want to incorporate information from a magazine
article in a report you are preparing, you somehow have to get the text
from the article into your computer. Painstakingly retyping the article is
not an appealing solution.
This chapter introduces you to the solution: optical character recognition
(OCR). It describes how OmniPage SE uses OCR technology to
transform text from scanned pages or image files into editable text for use
in your favorite computer applications.
We present the following topics:
X
What is optical character recognition
• Documents in OmniPage SE
• Basic processing steps
X
The OmniPage Desktop
X
Managing documents
X
OmniPage Documents
X
Settings
OmniPage SE User's Guide 21