Those times have passed away when writers used pen and paper to write their articles. story or fiction etc. Most of the writers now use computers for preparing their articles.  Earlier one has to mark pages in different books and use the material later on from these books. With changing times, techniques for collecting material from various sources have also changed. Most of the material is now avaialble online. However, some of the content on the net is in PDF format and copying of this material is disabled when the material is uploaded on the net or during the conversion from other formats to PDF format. Some of the material is available only in printed books or in reference guides.  You have no choice but to collect the information from various sources and type the material in your computer for further editing. At that point of time, the question might have struck to your mind if anyhow you could transfer all the text from the books to your computer without using your fingers. Its no more a dream, you can really do it without much hassle.

Gone are the days of typing, technologies like OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and ICR ( Intelligent Character Recognition) have made it possible to convert machine printed text or hand written text and translate the characters into ASCII text files that can easily be edited using Word Pad. Any text from the books or any other print source is scanned first and translated with the help of OCR technology.

Several software are available to convert the machine-printed text to editable text. New all in one printer from HP have bundled software that helps printers perform multi-task like scan, photo printing and conversion of scan text into picture, MS Word and PDF files. These printers are very useful as you can accomplish multiple tasks with these printers. The following functions are carried out using an all-in-one printer:

1. Printing

2. Copying

3. Scanning

4. Photo-printing

My objective here is not to go into these details of several functions of these printers but I am telling all this to make the process clear. It can be done with a scanner also.

Steps to convert machine-print text to editable text:

1. Scan the machine print-text (from books, magazines etc) either using a scanner or HP all- in - one printer. HP scanner or printer comes with software that includes OCR technology.

2. While scanning click the “scan” tab and check the box "document" and not the "picture".

3.Select "Yes" against the box "Scan the editable text (OCR)"

4. Select "Yes" or "No" against the box "Original contains picture" depending on the presence or absence of the graphics.

5. Next step is to select one of the options shown against the box "Scan to". You can choose either "save to file" if you wish to open it later or "Word Pad" if interested to open the file immediately to edit.

OCR Technology Free Download

HP Scanner/All-in-One/Printer with scanning capabilities come bundled with I.R.I.S. OCR software, an easy to use application to convert scanned paper documents into electronic information. I.R.I.S. OCR software quickly analyzes documents, images or PDF files and sends them entirely retyped into other application.

Readiris Pro 11 is the best OCR solution for home and professional users. Save an incredible amount of time when converting any paper, PDF and image documents into digital files you can edit, share and save!

Advance features of Readiris Pro 11

1. From paper to e-mail, Word, Excel and PDF files

Open any image or PDF file to reproduce it within seconds in more than 20 different applications such as Word, Excel, Acrobat, Internet Explorer, Netscape, WordPerfect, StarOffice and many others. With the Autoformat™ technology you'll even get your text, tables and images perfectly positioned as in the original document for easy document editing.

2. Convert and generate PDF files

The extended PDF support makes Readiris Pro 11 the smart PDF conversion solution.

Whether you need to extract text from a PDF or create a PDF file from a scanned document, Readiris Pro 11 is the right solution.

3. Unique combination of speed and accuracy!

Up to 30% more accurate than the previous version, Readiris Pro 11 perfectly reproduces words, numbers, graphics, titles, hand printed text, tables, columns, etc. Get fully editable documents identical to the originals in seconds!

In other words, with Readiris Pro 11, all your paper documents will be recognized and converted to editable text faster, easier and more accurately than ever before. And best of all, Readiris Pro 11 is so easy to use, you'll be up and running instantly!

Limitations:

Human interventions are needed to correct the marks that are not recognized correctly by the OCR systems. Such human intervention increases costs and delays. OCR technology can recognize only few fonts like "Aerial" and "New Times Romain". ICR technology is used for hand written text but cursive writing may not be recognized.