Pros & Cons
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- Most powerful and efficient OCR software available for OS X.
- Highly accurate character recognition and page-layout analysis.
- Wide range of output options for documents and ePub formats.
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- Lacks the built-in proofreader in the Windows version.
In almost everything related to graphics, OS X apps tend to be more flexible and more powerful than anything you can find in Windows, with one major exception: Optical-character-reading (OCR) software for Windows has always been more powerful than Mac-based OCR apps. Now that Abbyy's FineReader Pro ($99.99) has arrived for the Mac, it's still true that Windows has better OCR software, but that's only because Abbyy's Windows-based OCR app, Abbyy FineReader 11 Professional Edition, is even more powerful than its Mac-based OCR app. Abbyy's apps are now are our Editors' Choice OCR products for both Windows and OS X, but the OS X version hasn't caught up with all the features in the Windows version.
It's All About the OCR
Like all Abbyy's products, FineReader Pro uses the best OCR engine on the market. Whether the app reads pages from a scanner or from pictures or PDF files on your disk, it does a spectacularly good job of extracting text, arranging tables, and preserving layout.
View All FineReader Pro outputs editable documents in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML, plain text, and e-book formats—and these documents typically require only a minimum of editing to correct any mistakes the app made in reading the original text or layout. It also outputs PDF files that display either clean text instead of the original scanned image of the text, or with searchable invisible text hidden under the original picture so you get the combined benefits of accurate appearance and searchable text.
Getting Started
You can use FineReader Pro either in its automated mode or in a mode that lets you adjust its settings at each stage of its operation. In automated mode, you simply choose an operation from the opening menu and let the program do its work—for example. On the left-hand side of the opening menu, you select a source—either your scanner or a file on your disk. On the right-hand side, you choose an automated operation, such as "Convert to Excel Spreadsheet." A gear icon next to the name of the automated operation lets you specify some basic output options, such as image quality and whether to use CSS styles in creating HTML pages. After a few seconds, the program prompts you for an output location and file name, and your output document is written to disk.
