Anyone got OCR software?

[kevinod]

I'm looking for OCR software that can scan PDF files, does anyone have a suitable software?

What I'm after is something that can scan the FTO Workshop manuals and make them searchable. At the moment they're effectively pictures of each page, but you can't search for the text. Found I could do that with the 928 WMs and it's very handy!

Of course, if someone already has searchable copies of the WM, I'd be interested in a copy!

There's Omnipage Pro X for MacOS X I was looking at but it will only work on earlier versions of Mac OS X and not above 10.3. If I have to pay a small few quid for one I'd be willing, but I'd probably use it for little else.

[Grace]

If they are pictures then only way is convert with OCR.
I use ScanSoft (now Nuance) Omnipage Professional, I haven't upgraded this year so I have version 15, but I use it for work so it was worth the investment (around £90 on offer including PDF Converter and Create).
You can get PDF Converter Professional stand alone (which will convert from images) at http://www.nuance.co.uk/pdfconverter/standard/ or some older versions for less on ebay.

edit: Just remembered you mentioned Mac...I use it on PC not Mac though, not sure of compatibility.

[kevinod]

Yup, that's why I'm asking, need to convert pictures in to searchable text. These pictures just happen to be in a PDF file.

How good/bad do you find Omnipage? There's hundreds of pages so the more accurate and the less editing needed to straighten it up the better.

[Grace]

I'm very happy with it. I used to get faxed pages of patents with varying degrees of quality (but always fax which is not good) and only needed little corrections.
Having said that, as with any OCR it mainly depends on the source. If the image is clear the recognition is excellent if not it will definitely need adjustments.
I have also heard similar good comments of Abby FineReader.