What is OCR?In order to create machine-editable text from scanned documents, optical character recognition (OCR) technology is used. The text in scanned documents is not recognized by a computer. They are stored simply as image files that cannot be edited or read by the machine. This has drawbacks in that such files are not text-searchable or editable by a user. Visually searching a huge document for a particular data record is impractical. OCR converts such scanned documents to a machine-recognizable format, thereby making the document editable and searchable. OCRd documents can be easily shared and managed; they also make the office paper free and environment friendly. OCR can generate searchable PDF files, which are ideal for the Web.
OCR Software Free DownloadMany websites provide OCR software for free. The user must download the software and install it in his or her machine prior to use. It is also possible to get technical support and updates on the product from the website (you have to register with the website for this purpose). Usually, the evaluation copy will not have all the features of the software. Therefore, when the evaluation period gets over, you have to download the full version. Most websites notify the user when additional features of the product get released. However, in some cases, only the basic version of the software will be available for free. But, it can satisfy most of the needs of an individual or an organization. How Does Free OCR Software Work?An OCR tool analyses the light and dark areas of a document and recognizes the characters contained in it. Algorithms are used to compare the alphanumeric characters with those in the digital library. Once character identification is over, the document is converted to a machine-readable and machine-editable text. The end products of OCR software can either be an editable text document or a searchable PDF file. There are tools that can convert machine-unintelligible image files to readable, searchable, and editable documents with up to 98% accuracy. The challenge is to find the right tool that is tailor-made for your application from among the wide variety of freeware on the Net. |





