Optical character recognition (OCR) is the process of turning an image into computer-editable text so you do not have to retype the text manually. An image is an electronic picture of text such as a scanned paper document or an electronic fax file. Images do not have editable text characters; they have many tiny dots (pixels) that together form a picture of text.
During OCR, OmniPage Pro uses the selected settings in the OmniPage Toolbox to determine the text flow on a page, and creates ordered zones around areas of a page to identify what will be recognized as text or retained as a graphic. After OCR, you can save the resulting text to a variety of word-processing, page layout, and spreadsheet applications.
In addition to text recognition, OmniPage Pro can retain the following elements of a document during OCR.
Photos, logos, and drawings are examples of graphics.
Font types, font sizes, and font styles (such as bold or italic) are examples of text formatting.
Column structure, paragraph spacing, table formats, and placement of graphics are examples of page formatting.
The graphics, text formatting, and page formatting elements that OmniPage Pro retains are determined by the settings you select.
NOTE: OmniPage Pro only recognizes machine-printed characters such as laser-printed or typewritten text. However, it can retain handwritten text, such as a signature, as a graphic.