Slashdot Mirror
Digital Cameras vs Scanners for OCR?
ttennebkram asks: "With 6 and 8 Megapixel cameras on the market, some now with Wifi built in, it might be more convenient to shoot pictures of your bills and papers with a camera than fussing with the scanner. By the numbers, it would seem feasible. 300dpi for an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper works out to about 8 megapixels; 300 dpi is usually what OCR vendors suggest. I imagine for high volume good results you'd want to maybe mount the camera on a tripod arm over your desk. Heck, I was thinking of a glass desk and maybe one camera below and one above, and maybe a foot pedal to trigger the cameras (and I suppose a flash and high F-stop would help as well). If I could quickly 'snap' all the junk paper I have and electronically file it, maybe OCR the images at night in batch while I'm asleep, and then maybe get rid of all that paper once and for all. Using a traditional cheap scanner just takes too long. So has anybody tried this? I realize that camera optics are different than scanner optics, so maybe it's not just a question of raw pixel counts. Any thoughts?"
The problems I had were (a) getting the book flat, and (b) getting the lighting right. With flash, you end up with a ring of brightness and by OCR software got very confused, as the grey newsprint outside the flash's ring was being handled as black.
If I were a whizz with Photoshop/GIMP/etc, I suppose I could have done some sort of correction to the picture, but...
I've heard how Kinko's have book scanners that will copy and bind a book for you - perhaps they also have a scanning to CD/DVD service? Would that be cheaper for you?
I thought about keeping things electronically, but then I realize I'd have to take time to scan them and file them and that would take a lot more time, over all, than just dropping them in folders.
That's what I thought until I actually tried it.
I have an Fujitsu ScanSnap document scanner which I use on all my documents. It scans both sides of a page at the same time, can hold 15 pages (I think) in its feeder tray, and takes 5 or 6 seconds to scan a page. Since it scans both sides of a page at the same time, this actually ends up being 5 or 6 seconds per two pages.
It is small enough to sit on my desk and its "on" switch is the loading tray flap - flap closed is "off".
When I want to scan something, I open the flap, load the tray with the document, and hit the "scan" button.
It quickly scans all the pages and sends the scan to a program called Readiris Pro (v11) - this program will OCR the document and save it into my digital cabinet as a PDF "Image + Text". This is a really cool format because there are actually two "layers" to each page - the actual scan of the page (so it looks right) and then a text layer below that has all the OCR information. What this means is that, although you are looking at a raster image, you can search the PDF for specific information and copy and paste text right out of the document.
Let me clarify that with an example:
Let's say you have a PDF of a utility bill. The PDF you are looking at is a scan of the bill itself - not a text-based representation. However, you can grab the "text" cursor and copy your account number right from the image! Obviously, you are not copying from the image, but from the text layer that has all the OCR'd text positioned correctly on the page, but hidden from view.
Since all the text has been OCR'd, the PDFs are now searchable. Since my digital cabinet is just a collection of folders based on category (Utility, Financial, etc), I use another program (DEVONthink Personal) to index it. Let's say I am talking with my insurance company and they have a question about a claim. I can type in the claim number into DEVONthink and, boom, all the documents which reference that claim will be displayed. Simply clicking on an entry in the result list will bring up the document itself and highlight where the claim number appears on the page. BTW, if a provider allows PDF downloads of actual bills, I can drop them directly into the digital cabinet and they will be indexed along with my other documents.
Yes - this cost a little much to set up ($300 for the scanner (on sale), $90 total for DEVONthink and Readiris Pro), but I was able to sell the full copy of Adobe Acrobat that came with the scanner on eBay for $175, so the actual cost was closer to $225.
It's probably not for everybody, but I am certainly happy with the process.
- Tony