ABBYY FineReader - 10.0 User Manual

ABBYY® FineReader 10
Home Edition

User’s Guide

© 2010 ABBYY. All rights reserved.

ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition User’s Guide

Information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not bear any commitment on the part of
ABBYY.
The software described in this document is supplied under a license agreement. The software may only be used or
copied in strict accordance with the terms of the agreement. It is a breach of the "On legal protection of software and
databases" law of the Russian Federation and of international law to copy the software onto any medium unless
specifically allowed in the license agreement or nondisclosure agreements.
No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any from or by any means, electronic or other, for any
purpose, without the express written permission of ABBYY.
© 2010 ABBYY. All rights reserved.
ABBYY, the ABBYY logo, ABBYY FineReader, ADRT are either registered trademarks or trademarks of ABBYY
Software Ltd.
Fonts Newton, Pragmatica, Courier © 2001 ParaType, Inc.
Font OCR-v-GOST © 2003 ParaType, Inc.
© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Microsoft, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, Windows Vista, Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks
of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
© 1991-2008 Unicode, Inc. All rights reserved.
OpenOffice.org is property of Sun Microsystems, Inc.
JasPer License Version 2.0:
© 2001-2006 Michael David Adams
© 1999-2000 Image Power, Inc.
© 1999-2000 The University of British Columbia
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition User’s Guide

Contents

Overview.........................................................................................................................4

Working with ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition....................................................5

From Image to Text................................................................................................................................. 5

Scanner Interfaces..................................................................................................................................6

Editing Document Photos........................................................................................................................ 7

Saving Page Images............................................................................................................................... 8

Software Improvement Program.............................................................................................................9

Running ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition from Another Application ............................................. 9

Improving Conversion Quality............................................................................................................... 10

Tips................................................................................................................................13

Scanning Tips .......................................................................................................................................13

Taking Photos of Documents................................................................................................................ 14

Appendix.......................................................................................................................17

Supported Saving Formats ................................................................................................................... 17

Supported Image Formats .................................................................................................................... 17

Glossary................................................................................................................................................18

Keyboard Shortcuts............................................................................................................................... 18

Using Help............................................................................................................................................. 19

How to Buy an ABBYY Product..................................................................................22

ABBYY Offices and Technical Support Contacts ................................................................................. 22

About ABBYY........................................................................................................................................ 23

Activating and Registering ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition...........................24

Activation............................................................................................................................................... 24

Registration...........................................................................................................................................25

Privacy Policy........................................................................................................................................ 25

Technical Support........................................................................................................26

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ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition User’s Guide

Overview

ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition is an easy–to–use application that converts document scans and photos into
various text formats.
The application uses cutting edge technologies developed by ABBYY, which ensure very accurate optical character
recognition and retain the original formatting of your documents. With this application, you will never have to re–type
your paper documents and then restore their formatting in a word processor.
This latest version includes new features for working with digital photos. Additionally, the automatic image processing
feature has been improved: besides the automatic detection of page orientation available in the previous version, the
application will now automatically split an image of facing pages into t wo separ ate images, remove noise, and correct
blur and trapezoid distortions which may occur on digital photos of documents.
Replace your scanner with a digital camera or smartphone! Simply take a snapshot of your document, convert it with
ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition, and get an editable version on your computer.

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ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition User’s Guide

Working with ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition

This chapter provides instructions on converting images with ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition.

Chapter contents:

• From Image to Text

• Scanner Interfaces

• Editing Document Photos

• Saving Page Images

• Running ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition from Another Application

• Improving Conversion Quality

From Image to Text

With ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition, you can quickly get an electronic version of a paper document or convert
a document image into editable and searchable text.
The flow chart below shows the steps required to convert a document:

Working with the application:

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ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition User’s Guide

1. Start ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition.
The main window will open, together with a New Task window, where you can quickly s elect and start a task.

2. There are four tabs in the New Task window:
Scan – This tab lists the image processing tasks for images obtained directly from a scanner. These tasks

require a scanner to be properly connected to your computer. The scanner must support the WIA or TWAIN
scanning interface.

Open – This tab lists the image processing tasks for images stored on your hard disk, on a removable
storage medium, or on a network drive.

Photo – This tab lists the image processing tasks for images contained directly from a digital camera or
digital photos stored on your computer. To get images from a camera, the camera must be connected to your
computer and must support the WIA interface.

Want more? – This tab provides information about ABBYY FineReader Professional Edition. You may want
to consider buying this application if you need to OCR large numbers of complex documents.

Click the tab that contains the task you need to perform.

3. In the Document Language list, select the language of your document
See the section named "If there are too many errors in the converted text" for additional information on
selecting the right language.

4. Click the button of the desired task.

5. Feed the images to the program (i.e. either scan paper documents or select document images already stored
on your computer).
Note: If you select the Photo task, the Photo Editor will be launched. See the "Editing Document Photos"
section for instructions on editing document photos.

6. The selected images will appear in the main window and will then be converted into the format of your
choice.
Note: Selecting the Scan… or Open Photo… task will not convert your images into a text format. The
images will appear in the main window with the various areas marked on them. For more about areas, see
the section named "If document formatting has not been retained."

Note:

1. You can use the tools on the main window toolbar to change the conversion settings. You can also save an
image in another image format (see the "Saving Page Images" section for details).

2. If you find the resulting document unsatisfactory, follow the recommendations provided in the "Improving
Conversion Quality" section.

3. The tasks available in the New Task window may vary depending on your version of the program and on
other software installed on your computer.

4. When you are converting mages in ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition, the application will displa y tips and
advice on document recognition, as well as news from ABBYY. You may disable this feature by clearing the
check box next to the corresponding item in the Help menu. With some types of license, you may not be able
to urn off this feature.

Scanner Interfaces

By default, ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition uses a built–in scanning dialog box named ABBYY FineReader
Scanning. If this dialog box is incompatible with your scanner, the dialog box provided by the driver of your scanner

will be used.

1. ABBYY FineReader Scanningdialog box

In this dialog box, you can make the following settings:

• Image resolution, scanning mode (grayscale, black and white, or color), and brightness.

• Paper size (you can select one of the standard sizes or specify a custom size).

• Scanning options for multi–page documents:

a. Use automatic document feeder (ADF)
b. Enable duplex scanning (if supported by your scanner)

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ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition User’s Guide

c. Pause bet ween pages

2. TWAIN and WIA interfaces

Scanning settings can also be made in the scanning dialog box provided by the driver of your scanner. See the
documentation of your scanner for a description of this dialog box.

Important! Please consult the documentation supplied with your scanner for instructions on how to connect the
scanner to your PC. Be sure to install the software supplied with your scanner.
See the "Scanning Tips" section for advice on selecting the right scanning options.

Editing Document Photos

Some document photos may have defects that prevent good quality OCR. These defects include optical distortions
that make the page look like a trapezium rather than like a rectangle, blurred letters that occur if you shake the
camera when taking the picture, and noise introduced by the image sensor of your camera.
The software includes a Photo Editor where you can edit your images to m ake them more suitable for OCR.

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ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition User’s Guide

Editing images in the Photo Editor:

1. The Photo Editor is launched automatically when you start an image processing task (for example, when
you start a task from the Photo tab in the New Task window). See the "From Image to Text" section for more
information about tasks.

2. Edit your image:

• If the program failed to detect the orientation of the page, use the Rotate Left or Rotate Right buttons

to restore the normal orientation of the text.

• Use the Reduce ISO Noise and Remove Motion Blur buttons to clear up any noise and sharpen the

image.

• To correct any optical distortions, click the Begin Trapezium Crop button and then drag the corners of

the trapezium to turn it into a rectangle. Click Apply for the changes to take affect or Cancel to discard
the changes and close this tool.

3. Make all the necessary changes. Use the
Photo Editor.

4. When you are finished editing the images, click OK to start the OCR process.

buttons at the bottom of the

Saving Page Images

ABBYY FineReader 10 Home Edition allows you not only to convert images into text files, but also to save scanned or
opened images in various image formats.

To scan and save an image:

1. Start ABBYY FineReader Home Edition.

2. In the New Task dialog box, click the Scan tab and then click the Scan to Image button.

3. The ABBYY FineReader Scanning dialog box opens. Scan your documents and close this dialog box. See
the "Scanner Interface" section for more information about the scanning settings.

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