OmniPage 16 Professional

List Price: $499.99 Discount Price: $208.00

Features:

• Faster, more accurate OCR
• New Improved formatting, tables and more
• New Get better organized with PaperPort (included)
• New Capture text with a digital camera
• New Automated data collection from forms

Customer Reviews:

worthwhile upgrade [Posted on 2007-11-02]
I was not sure OP16 would be worth it, as OP15 has served me pretty well and (with a service pack) was a huge advance over previous versions in terms of stability. (I've been using OP since, hmm, OP11?) But there were some annoyances:
- the OP15 batch manager (workflow wizard) UI was poorly designed and you often had to start over if you clicked on the wrong thing
- the OP15 PDF MRC (multi-raster compression) option saved a lot of space if you produce "searchable image" PDFs but wasn't very good-looking, sufficiently so that I turned it off

I've thrown about 1000 pages at OP16 so far and it seems as solid as OP15+SP1. So it looks like Nuance has gotten a handle on QA. It is also MUCH faster, even with the "Accuracy" checkbox set (as it is by default). The results of MRC PDFs now look as good as non-MRC PDFs, which is great since MRC can save you disk space (25% is a routine number for large B&W scans and it can potentially be a lot more). And the batch manager UI has even been cleaned up! (In fact there are new optional "newbie" UIs for the interactive job UI, which I haven't tried because I never use it.)

So far, I have no complaints.

Unusable with batches of PDFs [Posted on 2008-02-27]
The OCR engine is very good and it has a strong list of workflow features, but the program is horribly prone to crashing if using PDF, to the point that it won't batch process a folder of PDFs. Have tried it on multiple Windows versions and installations and multiple types of PDF, all with the same result every time--whenever trying to batch process a folder and save the output as PDF searchable image, it crashes without fail.

In short, if the program worked as it is supposed to, it would be very good indeed. But since it doesn't, it's completely useless to me.

This same problem seems to have dogged Omnipage Pro since at least version 12. You would think they might have done something about it by now.

An OCR workhorse flop [Posted on 2008-05-26]
I purchased OmniPage 16 Professional to serve as my workhorse OCR application. I tested it out on 30 pages of typed address labels and a hundred+ page phone book. OmniPage promises far more than it delivers. As a workhorse, it's at best very hit-or-miss. For me, its' a flop.

For starters, it randomly crashes. That's enough to turn me off of any product, but that's just the beginning.

When the application runs, it doesn't run well. For example, OCR software needs to figure out where the text is and in what form (columns, tables, etc). OmniPage obviously put a lot of effort into this capability but to no avail. I still needed to manually adjust each and every scanned image. For example, in the phonebook test, OmniPage created polygons for data columns and neatly excluded random blocks of phone numbers. It would have been nice if I could specify the number of columns and whether or not a rectangle would suffice to cover a column. I found no such option. OmniPage does allow the user to create their own custom scanning zones - and they work great - so long as the text in each image is lined up in exactly the same position across all images. I made a concerted effort to make this happen, above and beyond what one might expect from staff employees, and I still found it impossible to do consistently. After spending a few FULL days experimenting with different settings, and manually configuring a few hundred pages, I got the message.

Another indicator that the OmniPage folks don't actually use their own software is in the OCR Proofreader interface design. At random intervals, the image view shows a split screen. Such a feature serves no useful purpose. The split screen bears no relation to the imaged zone, and it hinders proofreading. More annoying, however, is the fact that the "Add" (to training file) button remains enabled even when pressing it results in an error box message. This "feature" requires the user to click the "OK" button, click the "Resume" button, and then re-enter their last correction. Simply disabling the button for the duration of the edit would suffice. Lastly, this interface lacks an "Undo" button. I certainly don't want my training files to remember my mistakes. OmniPage does offer a different interface to review training data, but there's no fast way to find a recent error, and all I really needed was an "Undo" button.

I checked their website for software updates, but these appear to be rare, so my hopes aren't high. I could list many more issues, but these should suffice. While the features offered look great in writing, don't be fooled. I won't buy OCR software again until I see it in action with a sample of my own projects. No one should.

Installation is ridiculous [Posted on 2008-07-03]
Bought new HP C5280, all-in-one to support OmniPage 16 pro. Scanner works fine and operates from a USB port. Trying to get OP16 to "talk" to the scanner should be easy. Just use the "Scanner Setup Wizard," right? I have tried many different ways, and none work. First of all, is my scanner a TWAIN, a WAI, or "other," or even a TWAIN-WAI? I have tried them all. The closest seems to be "other." Then, it responds with "Please insert a disk into drive I." My computer doesn't have a drive I. My two CD/DVD drives are E & F. I even copied the contents of the HP disk to a memory stick and tried every available USB port, and that doesn't work either. You would think they could, after 16 generations, have their installation program check every removable drive on the computer. Doesn't sound very tough now does it? After wasting about 4 hours, I will see if their customer service is any good.

Waste of Money [Posted on 2008-07-28]
This version of Omnipage is a waste of money. It works OK on a single document, but if you try to batch process a folder it will crash constantly. I've tried PDF and TIFF and the batch system can not make it through a single folder without a runtime error. Furthermore, the accuracy claim is a joke. It drops the ball with proper nouns. I'm using OCR for searching. I'm mainly searching for names. Omnipage may get 90% on verbs, pronouns and articles, but averages closer to 60% on the most important search content. I could live with the poor accuracy, because that is just inherent with OCR, but the time consuming crashes makes this product worthless to me.

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