ABBYY FineReader Professional 10

ABBYY FineReader is an optical character recognition software that is able to scan documents and readily converting images of documents such as scans, photographs, and PDF files into editable and searchable electronic formats. It’s the best alternative to manual retyping, because its text recognition system delivers precision accuracy in converting almost any type of printed document including books, magazine articles with complex layouts, tables and spreadsheets, and even faxes.

FineReader 11 brings the OCR technology to a new level due to a new black-and-white mode that is said to speed up to 45 percent the document processing . To streamline document conversion processes, FineReader further improves its unique capability to reconstruct native formatting of multi-page documents and also supports easy creation of electronic books in the most popular formats.

In addition to Microsoft Word documents, ABBYY FineReader 11 now adds support for OpenOffice.org Writer (ODT) files. When saving to PDF, the application intelligently identifies and reproduces the document’s content outline bookmarks with live links for better navigation and reading.

The new version delivers significant improvements in the detection of vertical headers, as well as margin notes, diagrams, tables, and styles, minimizing the effort typically required for manual correction. A new feature allows users to convert paper documents and images of text to a variety of formats supported by e-book readers, tablet PCs and smartphones, including the newly added Electronic Publication (.ePub) and FictionBook (.fb2) formats. Additionally, texts converted with ABBYY FineReader 11 can be sent directly to the users of Amazon Kindle account.

Pluses: support for OpenOffice documents, faster scanning process, improved detection of complex layouts, tables, images and spreadsheets, added support for a variety of formats supported by e-book readers;

Drawbacks/flaws: the trial version offers only one process per document and it will expire after 15 days usage or when 50 pages have been processed;

In conclusion: a powerful solution for scanning and converting documents from their physical form on paper to an electronic editable form without the need of rewriting. Suitable for libraries, archives and even logistics.