I.R.I.S. Readiris 14 User Manual
User Guide
5/31/2012
I.R.I.S. Products & Technologies
dgi
Readiris 14
Mac OS
ReadirisTM 14 – User Guide
Table of Contents
Introduction ....................................................................... 1
What's new in Readiris 14 ................................................. 3
Legal Notices ..................................................................... 5
Section 1: Installation and Activation ....................................... 9
System requirements ......................................................... 9
Software installation .......................................................... 9
Activating Readiris .......................................................... 10
Software Registration ...................................................... 11
Check for updates ............................................................ 12
Uninstalling Readiris ....................................................... 13
Technical Support ............................................................ 14
Section 2: Getting Started ........................................................ 15
Exploring the interface .................................................... 15
Changing the user interface language .............................. 17
Configuring your scanner in Readiris .............................. 18
Section 3: Basic Document Processing .................................... 23
Automatic Processing ...................................................... 29
Saving and loading settings ............................................. 30
Loading Settings ................................................................................. 31
Restoring Factory Settings .................................................................. 32
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Section 4: Scanning and Opening Documents........................ 33
General Processing Options ............................................ 33
Preprocessing Options. ....................................................................... 34
Page Analysis Options ........................................................................ 35
Scanning Documents ....................................................... 36
Scanning with I.R.I.S. scanners ....................................... 38
IRIScan Express 2 ............................................................................... 38
IRISCard / IRIScan Anywhere / IRIScan Book ................................. 39
Opening Image Files ....................................................... 40
Other ways of opening image files ..................................................... 42
Opening Digital Camera Images ..................................... 43
Deskewing Digital Camera Images .................................................... 44
Tips for making digital camera images .............................................. 45
Section 5: Selecting the Recognition Options ......................... 47
Recognition Options ........................................................ 47
Other Recognition Options ................................................................. 48
Document Characteristics ................................................ 52
Advanced Recognition Options ....................................... 54
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Using Interactive Learning .............................................. 55
Using font dictionaries .................................................... 57
Using user lexicons ......................................................... 59
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Section 6: Optimizing the Scanned Documents ..................... 63
Adjusting the Image Quality ........................................... 65
Section 7: Editing the Recognition Zones ............................... 71
Introduction ..................................................................... 71
Using zoning templates ................................................... 78
Section 8: Saving Documents ................................................... 81
Saving Documents ........................................................... 81
Selecting the Destination of your documents ..................................... 85
Starting a new project ......................................................................... 87
Saving Documents to online Storage Systems ................ 87
Saving the Contents of Particular Zones ......................... 89
Saving Documents as Image Files ................................... 90
Other ways of saving documents as image files ................................. 92
Selecting the Layout Options .......................................... 92
Layout options (Text documents) .................................... 94
Layout Options (Spreadsheet Documents) ...................... 97
Selecting the Graphics options ...................................... 100
Page Size ....................................................................... 101
PDF Options .................................................................. 102
PDF Passwords .............................................................. 106
Section 9: Processing Batches of Documents ........................ 109
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Batch Processing ........................................................... 109
Watched Folder ............................................................. 111
How to .................................................................................. 115
How to configure your scanner in Readiris ................... 115
How to recognize barcodes ........................................... 117
Recognizing barcodes manually ....................................................... 118
Recognizing a particular barcode ..................................................... 118
Recognizing barcodes to separate document batches ....................... 119
How to improve the recognition results ........................ 119
How to process digital camera images .......................... 120
Deskewing Digital Camera Images .................................................. 121
Tips for making digital camera images ............................................ 122
How to separate document batches ............................... 123
Separating opened documents manually .......................................... 125
How to separate batches of image files ......................... 127
How to recognize forms ................................................ 128
How to process low-resolution images .......................... 129
Index .................................................................................. 131
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Readiris
RI_14_dgi_21052012-02
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Welcome to the Readiris documentation. The aim of this
documentation is to help you get up to speed with using Readiris. It
covers Readiris' installation and setup, the basic processing steps
and the application's commands and working areas. At the end of
the documentation you find an How to section in which particular
questions are addressed.
The procedures described in this documentation are based on the
Mac OS Lion operating system.
The information in this documentation is subject to change without
prior notice.
INTRODUCTION
Readiris is I.R.I.S.' flagship document recognition software. With
Readiris you can scan paper documents, open image files, PDF files
and digital camera images and turn them into fully editable text
documents and text-searchable PDF documents you can save, share
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Introduction
and send to online Storage Systems. Readiris supports a wide range
of output formats, the most important ones being PDF, DOCX and
XLSX.
The documents Readiris generates can either be saved on your
computer, directly sent via e-mail or exported to online Storage
Systems such as Evernote, Dropbox and Google Docs.
Readiris recognizes documents in 130 languages. All American and
European languages, including the Central-European, Baltic and
Cyrillic languages as well as Greek and Turkish are supported.
Readiris also recognizes Hebrew, as well as four Asian languages:
Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese and Korean.
Besides text recognition, Readiris offers powerful compression
features for PDF files, thanks to I.R.I.S.' compression technology
iHQC.
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WHAT'S NEW IN READIRIS 14
Improved User Interface
Thumbnail View
Export to online Storage Systems
Deskewing digital camera images
Improved User Interface
The Readiris interface has been redesigned and improved. All the
commands you need to process documents and to complete your
OCR tasks are now grouped in a top toolbar.
Tip: to learn more about the new interface, see the topic Exploring the
interface.
Thumbnail View
In the new interface you can toggle between Regular and
Thumbnail View.
In Thumbnail View you can easily rearrange the pages by drag-anddropping them. The images are processed from left to right.
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Introduction
In Regular View you see the current image that is analyzed. The
page thumbnails are displayed in the Pages panel.
Export to online Storage Systems
The documents you process with Readiris can be sent to several
online Storage Systems: Evernote, Dropbox and Google Docs.
Deskewing digital camera images
Readiris now automatically detects if images have been made by a
digital camera, and allows you to correct their perspective. This way
you can deskew documents that were photographed from an angle.
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LEGAL NOTICES
Copyrights
Copyrights © 1987-2012 I.R.I.S. All Rights Reserved.
I.R.I.S. owns the copyrights to the Readiris software, to the online
help system and to this publication.
The information contained in this document is the property of
I.R.I.S. Its content is subject to change without notice and does not
represent a commitment on the part of I.R.I.S. The software
described in this document is furnished under a license agreement
which states the terms of use of this product. The software may be
used or copied only in accordance with the terms of that agreement.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, stored
in a retrieval system, or translated into another language without the
prior written consent of I.R.I.S.
This documentation uses fictitious names as examples; references to
actual persons, companies or organizations are strictly coincidental.
Trademarks
The Readiris logo and Readiris are trademarks of Image
Recognition Integrated Systems S.A.
OCR and barcode technology by I.R.I.S.
AutoFormat and Linguistic technology by I.R.I.S.
BCR and field analysis technology by I.R.I.S.
iHQC compression technology by I.R.I.S.
All other products mentioned in this documentation are trademarks
or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
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Legal Notices
Patents
iHQCTM patent-protected. US Patent No. 8,068,684.
Acknowledgements
Portions of this I.R.I.S. software uses the following copyrighted
material, the use of which is hereby acknowledged.
Dropbox SDK Copyright (c) 2010 Dropbox (Evenflow, Inc.),
http://getdropbox.com/
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files
(the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction,
including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge,
publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software,
and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so,
subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
Google Data Client Library
Copyright (c) 2007 Google Inc.
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the 'License'); you
may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You
may obtain a copy of the License at:
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
JPEG: This software is based in part on the work of the
Independent JPEG Group.
BWToolkit: Copyright (c) 2010, Brandon WalkinAll rights
reserved.
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Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:
o Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
o Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above
copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following
disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided
with the distribution.
o Neither the name of the Brandon Walkin nor the names of its
contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived
from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT
NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR
ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL,
EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
(INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF
SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA,
OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER
CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER
IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING
NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT
OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF
THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
TIFF library:
Copyright (c) 1988-1997 Sam Leffler
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Legal Notices
Copyright (c) 1991-1997 Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software
and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without
fee, provided that (i) the above copyright notices and this
permission notice appear in all copies of the software and related
documentation, and (ii) the names of Sam Leffler and Silicon
Graphics may not be used in any advertising or publicity relating to
the software without the specific, prior written permission of Sam
Leffler and Silicon Graphics.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS-IS" AND WITHOUT
WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR
OTHERWISE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY
WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
IN NO EVENT SHALL SAM LEFFLER OR SILICON
GRAPHICS BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL,
INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OF ANY KIND,
OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM
LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER OR NOT
ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF DAMAGE, AND ON ANY
THEORY OF LIABILITY, ARISING OUT OF OR IN
CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS
SOFTWARE.
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SECTION 1: INSTALLATION AND
ACTIVATION
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
This is the minimal system configuration required to use Readiris:
A Mac OS computer with Intel or Power PC G4 processor.
The operating system Mac OS X 10.5 or higher. Earlier versions
of the Mac OS operating system are not supported.
220 MB of free hard disk space.
SOFTWARE INSTALLATION
To install Readiris:
Insert the Readiris CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive of your
computer.
Click the Readiris CD-ROM icon on the Desktop.
Run the Readiris installation package and follow the on-screen
instructions.
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Section 1: Installation and Activation
You might be asked to enter an Administrator Username and
Password to install Readiris.
Scroll down and Agree with the terms of the license agreement.
Then click Install to start the actual installation.
You are prompted to enter the serial number.
The serial number can be found inside the product box and
contains 11 digits.
When the installation is finished, click Close.
The Readiris folder is added to the Applications folder by the
installation program.
ACTIVATING READIRIS
(Readiris ESD version and Readiris Corporate only)
When you run Readiris, you are asked to activate it. Unactivated
copies of Readiris are only available for use for 30 days.
Click Request the key to obtain your software key. You are
redirected to the Activation web page.
Note that an internet connection is required to complete the
activation.
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Fill in your data and click Submit.
You will receive the software key by e-mail within 24 hours.
Once you've received the key from I.R.I.S. insert it in the
corresponding field, and then click OK.
SOFTWARE REGISTRATION
Registering is required to get Technical Support. It also offers
other benefits, such as free updates, free trial downloads, video
tutorials, discount on new products, and so on.
To register Readiris:
On the Help menu, click Register Readiris to be directed to the
Registration web page.
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Section 1: Installation and Activation
Fill in your data and click Submit.
Note that an internet connection is required to complete the
activation.
CHECK FOR UPDATES
When you register your copy of Readiris you are entitled to free
software updates.
To check if updates are available:
On the Help menu, click Search for Updates.
Note: Readiris automatically checks for updates every 30
days.
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UNINSTALLING READIRIS
Should you want to remove Readiris from your computer, follow
the procedure below.
To uninstall the application:
Click Finder and open the Applications folder.
Drag the Readiris folder to the Trash.
Readiris will be removed from your machine.
Note: the Readiris preferences are not removed by dragging the
Readiris folder to the trash can, in case you should want to reinstall the software later on.
To remove the preferences:
On Mac OS Lion and later:
In the Finder's Go menu, press Alt. Then select Library and
go to Application Support. Then drag the Readiris folder to
the trash.
On Mac OS Snow Leopard and earlier:
Go to the Library > Application Support and drag the
Readiris folder to the trash.
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Section 1: Installation and Activation
TECHNICAL SUPPORT
If you register your copy of Readiris you are entitled to free
technical support. In the Technical Support section of our website
www.irislink.com/support you can find F.A.Q.'s (frequently asked
questions), Video Tutorials, and much more information to solve
common issues.
If you still can't find an answer to your question, click Technical
Support Contact and fill in the Web Contact Form.
Tip: also check the User Guides section on the site to make sure you have
the latest version of this User Guide.
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SECTION 2: GETTING STARTED
EXPLORING THE INTERFACE
The new Readiris interface looks as follows:
The interface consists of the following components and panels:
1. The Readiris menu bar
The Readiris menu bar regroups all the commands and options
available in Readiris, including advanced settings.
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Section 2: Getting Started
2. The top toolbar
The top toolbar is by far the most important tool in Readiris. It
contains all the basic commands you need to process your
documents. The commands are classified per group.
The top toolbar can be customized in two ways:
o You can add or remove output formats in the Format and
Destination group, by clicking the down arrow.
o You can add or remove commands from the toolbar: Ctrl-click
the toolbar, click Customize Toolbar and drag-and-drop the
commands you want to move from or to the toolbar.
3. The Scanned image
When a document is scanned or opened into Readiris, its image is
displayed. The different recognition zones are displayed. The zones
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can be edited with the tools in the Image and Layout Editing
panel.
4. The Pages panel
Each page you scan or open in Readiris has its thumbnail displayed
in the Pages panel. The pages are processed top-down. To change
the order of the pages, you drag a page from one location to
another.
To have a better overview of the page thumbnails you can switch to
Thumbnail view. In this view only the page thumbnails are
displayed. The analyzed image is not displayed anymore. In
Thumbnail view the thumbnails run from left to right, and from top
to bottom.
To switch to Thumbnail view, click the Thumbnail view icon at the
bottom of the Pages panel.
5. The Image and Layout Editing panel
The Image Editing panel allows to modify the current page: you can
deskew pages that were scanned at an angle, rotate them, adjust the
image quality, and so on. Point to the different buttons to display
their tooltips.
Also see the sections Optimizing the Scanned Documents and
Editing the Recognition Zones for more information.
CHANGING THE USER INTERFACE LANGUAGE
Readiris opens in the user interface language that is currently
activated in your Mac System Preferences.
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Section 2: Getting Started
To change the user interface language in Readiris:
Click the System Preferences icon.
Click the Language & Text icon.
Drag the language of your choice to the top of the list.
The user interface of Readiris is available in a wide range of
languages.
Restart Readiris to apply the new language settings.
CONFIGURING YOUR SCANNER IN READIRIS
Readiris supports all Twain 1.9 compliant scanners, all Image
Capture compliant scanners, and IRIScan 2 and higher scanners
Before you can use a scanner, however, its drivers need to be
installed on your Mac.
Image Capture scanners
Connect your scanner to your Mac with a USB cable and power
it on.
You are automatically asked to install or update the necessary
software.
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Click Install to install the driver.
Note that an internet connection is required to complete this
operation.
Twain scanners
Connect your scanner to your Mac and power it on.
Install your scanner's Twain driver.
In general, drivers can be found on the CD-ROM provided with
your scanner and on the website of your scanner manufacturer.
They are not provided by I.R.I.S. Note that some scanner drivers
may not work under the latest versions of Mac OS. See the
documentation supplied with your scanner to find out which
platforms are supported. If necessary, contact your scanner
manufacturer.
IRIScan Express scanners
Connect your IRIScan Express scanner to your Mac and power it
on.
If Readiris is part of your IRIScan product, the driver has been
installed during the installation of Readiris.
If that is not the case, visit our website
www.irislink.com/support to download and install the required
driver.
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Section 2: Getting Started
IRISCard Anywhere / IRIScan Anywhere / IRIScan Book scanners
You do not need to install any drivers when using these scanners.
They are not Twain driver-based scanners that can be used from
within any application to scan documents. Instead, they are
designed to be used on their own, disconnected from any computer.
The documents you scan are stored in the scanner’s internal
memory (or optional SD card / USB flash drive). From there, they
can be loaded directly into Readiris when you connect the scanner
or insert the SD card or USB flash drive into your Mac.
To check if the scanner driver has been installed successfully:
In the Readiris menu, click Preferences.
Click the Scanner tab.
You should see your scanner listed*.
*This is not the case for the IRISCard Anywhere, IRIScan
Anywhere and IRIScan Book scanners.
If your scanner is not listed, its driver has not been installed
successfully.
Note that the IRIScan settings at the bottom are only available if
an IRIScan Express 2 scanner is connected.
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Once the scanner has been configured you can start scanning,
using the default scanner settings.
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SECTION 3: BASIC DOCUMENT
PROCESSING
Processing documents with Readiris is fairly straightforward when
using a basic configuration. In this section we discuss which steps
to take when doing such a basic configuration. For detailed
information about all the configuration steps, see sections 4 to 9.
Step 1: Scan or Open your images
In order to scan paper documents your scanner must be correctly
configured. See the section Configuring your scanner if necessary.
Click Scan to scan paper documents with your scanner.
A preview windows opens and displays your scanner settings.
With TWAIN scanners, these settings differ from one scanner to
another.
o Select Color and 300 DPI as preferences to obtain optimal
results.
o Select the Page Analysis Options of your choice:
Page Analysis is selected by default. This option
divides your documents into recognition zones.
Without recognition zones, Readiris cannot process
your documents. If you choose to disable this
function, you will need to draw recognition zones
manually on your documents.
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Section 3: Basic Document Processing
Readiris can deskew (straighten) documents and
rotate them by means of Page orientation
detection.
When your scanner generates black borders around
your documents, or when your documents contain
information that is partially cut from the page,
Readiris tends to create recognition zones on the
borders of the document, even though they do not
contain any useful content. In such cases it is
recommended to use the option Ignore Border
Zones.
or
Click File to open existing image files.
o Select the Page Analysis Options of your choice.
The same Page Analysis Options are available here.
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The images are displayed in the interface.
Step 2: Modifying the images
The images you scan and load into Readiris can be modified easily:
To change the order of the pages, drag the thumbnails to a
different position in the Pages panel.
To delete a page, select a page and click the delete icon.
To delete a zone, select it and press the Backspace button on
your keyboard.
If necessary you can modify the recognition zones. See the section
Editing the Recognition Zones for detailed information.
Step 3: Select the Recognition Language
Selecting the right document language is essential to obtain good
recognition results with Readiris. The default language is set to the
language of your current language of your operating system.
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