Comments on: Abbyy Finereader and Adobe Acrobat – Why Does Fujitsu Include Both?

By: BrooksD

BrooksD — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:24:04 +0000

Thanks so much for posting your comparison Bern.. very interesting.

By: Bern Shanfield

Bern Shanfield — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:03:56 +0000

I played with comparing these two different pathways to getting a document OCRed and found there are huge differences.

ABBYY produces a doc that is 10-20 times larger but far more accurate. Acrobat seems to be rebuilding a doc from scratch into its own format which is way more compact and editable. So depending on the importance of size and edibility there's choices to be made.

I only compared one document (a 10 page bank statement) with lots of lines and a barcode that ABBYY did well with while Acrobat failed at. I also noticed that the DPI setting greatly impacted the accuracy.

By: pendolino

pendolino — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:58:00 +0000

i dont recall getting ABBYY finereader with my scansnap s500m. am i missing something? i only got acrobat 7.

btw – mine is the mac version. it would be useful if people highlight what versions of the hardware and software they are using to avoid confusion.

By: pendolino

pendolino — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:58:22 +0000

julian – you're on windows right?

By: Tullio

Tullio — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:28:36 +0000

Anyway the OCR seems better with ABBYY than with Acrobat. I may just keep Acrobat for editing.

By: Tullio

Tullio — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:23:43 +0000

You mean a PDF which has been OCRed won't be OCRed a second time?

All my setting with the 1500M are with "Convert To Searchable PDF", does it means they are all OCRed with ABBYY FineReader and won't be with Acrobat?

Is there some situation I should avoid that? Thanks!

By: BrooksD

BrooksD — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:32:41 +0000

Hi TJ, I don't think it would require that the PDFs be specifically ScanSnap-created. FineReader would, I assume, be happy with any old PDF.

However, and maybe this is what you are getting at, I'd imagine that the PDFs can't be already-OCRed.

By: tjcarter

tjcarter — Wed, 20 May 2009 04:44:55 +0000

This still requires that the files be ScanSnap-created, does it not?

(I'm very excited, My S1500M arrives Thursday, which also happens to be my brithday!)

By: BrooksD

BrooksD — Mon, 18 May 2009 05:23:04 +0000

Hi rob,

Thanks for the note about FineReader. Awesome stuff.

I agree about using Preview.app. The Leopard one is great. That's what I've started using too when I need to delete or rearrange some pages.

By: rob mayoff

rob mayoff — Sun, 17 May 2009 18:57:47 +0000

You can use FineReader to batch OCR (on a Mac at least). If FineReader is idle, you can drag a pile of scanned PDFs to it and it will OCR them as a batch. However, if it's busy when you drag your files to it, it will give you an error instead of adding them to its work queue.

Also, you can (again, on a Mac) use Apple's Preview.app to delete and rearrange pages in a PDF. I find it more pleasant to use than Acrobat for such tasks.