ScanSoft OMNIPAGE PRO 14,C2424 - WorkCentre Color Solid Ink,OMNIPAGE PRO 14 User Manual

LEGAL NOTICES

Copyright © 2003 ScanSoft, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
transmitted, transcribed, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or translated into any
language or computer language in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic,
magnetic, optical, chemical, manual, or otherwise, without prior written consent from
ScanSoft, Inc., 9 Centennial Drive, Peabody, Massachusetts 01960. Printed in the United
States of America and in Ireland.

The software described in this book is furnished under license and may be used or copied only
in accordance with the terms of such license.

I

MPORTANT NOTICE

ScanSoft, Inc. provides this publication "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or
implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a
particular purpose. Some states or jurisdictions do not allow disclaimer of express or implied
warranties in certain transactions; therefore, this statement may not apply to you. ScanSoft
reserves the right to revise this publication and to make changes from time to time in the
content hereof without obligation of ScanSoft to notify any person of such revision or
changes.

T

RADEMARKS AND CREDITS

ScanSoft, OmniPage, OmniPage Pro, PaperPort, Pagis, True Page, Direct OCR, RealSpeak and
ASR-1600 are registered trademarks or trademarks of ScanSoft, Inc., in the United States

and/or other countries. All other company names or product names referenced herein may be
the trademarks of their respective holders.

THIRD PARTY LICENSES/NOTICES

Please see acknowledgements/notices at the end of this guide.

ScanSoft, Inc.

9 Centennial Drive
Peabody, MA 01960
U.S.A.

ScanSoft Belgium BVBA

Guldensporenpark 32
BE-9820 Merelbeke
Belgium

Part Number 50-281A-10119

OmniPage Pro User’s Guide iii

C ONTENTS

WELCOME 7

Using this Guide 8
Getting online Help 9

Online HTML Help 9
Context-Sensitive Help 9
Tech Notes 10
Glossary 10
When to go online 10

1INSTALLATION AND SETUP 11

System requirements 12
Installing OmniPage Pro 13
Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro 14
How to start the program 16
Registering your software 17
New features in OmniPage Pro 14 17

2INTRODUCTION 19

What is optical character recognition 20

OmniPage Pro’s OCR capabilities 20
Documents in OmniPage Pro 21
Basic processing steps 21

The OmniPage Desktop 22

The Menu bar 23
The Toolbars 23
The Image Panel 24
The Text Editor 24
The OmniPage Toolbox 25

iv Contents

Managing documents 26

Thumbnails 26
Document Manager 27
Customizing Document Manager columns 28
Deleting pages from a document 28
Printing a document 29
Closing a document 29

OmniPage Documents 29

Why save to OPD 30
How to save to OPD 30
How to load an OPD 31

Settings 31

3PROCESSING DOCUMENTS 33

Quick Start Guide 34

Loading and recognizing sample image files 34

Scanning and recognizing a single page 34
Processing overview 36
Automatic processing 38

Stopping and restarting automatic processing 39
Manual processing 40
Combined processing 41
Processing with workflows 43
Processing from other applications 44

How to set up Direct OCR 44

How to use Direct OCR 45

How to use OmniPage Pro with PaperPort 46
Processing with the Batch Manager 47
Defining the source of page images 48

Input from image files 48

Input from scanner 49

Scanning with an ADF 50

Scanning without an ADF 51
Describing the layout of the document 51
Zones and backgrounds 53

Automatic zoning 53

OmniPage Pro User’s Guide v

Manual zoning 54

Zone types and properties 55

Working with zones 57

Speed zoning 59
Table grids in the image 59
Using zone templates 61

4PROOFING AND EDITING 63

The editor display and views 64
Proofreading OCR results 65
Verifying text 67
User dictionaries 68
Languages 69
Training 69

Manual training 70

IntelliTrain 70

Training files 71
Text and image editing 73
On-the-fly editing 75
Reading text aloud 76

5SAVING AND EXPORTING 79

Saving OmniPage Documents 80
Export Results button 80
Saving original images 81
Saving recognition results 82

Selecting a formatting level 83

Selecting converter options 85

Using multiple converters 86

Saving to PDF 88

Converting from PDF 89
Copying pages to Clipboard 89
Sending pages by mail 90
Other export targets 92

vi Contents

6WORKFLOWS 93

Workflows 94

Sample workflows 94

Running workflows 96
Workflow Assistant 98

Creating workflows 98

Modifying workflows 101
Batch Manager 101

Creating new jobs 102

Modifying jobs 103

Managing and running jobs 103
Watched folders 104
Barcode driven workflows 106
Voice recognition 107

7TECHNICAL INFORMATION 109

Troubleshooting 110

Solutions to try first 110

Testing OmniPage Pro 111

Increasing memory resources 112

Increasing disk space 112

Text does not get recognized properly 113

Problems with fax recognition 114

System or performance problems during OCR 114
Supported file types 115

File types for opening and saving images 115

File types for saving recognition results 116
Uninstalling the software 118

OmniPage Pro User’s Guide 7

Welcome

Welcome to this OmniPage Pro® text recognition program, and thank
you for choosing our software! The following documentation has been
provided to help you get started and give you an overview of the
program.

This User’s Guide

This guide introduces you to using OmniPage Pro 14. It includes
installation and setup instructions, a description of the program’s
commands and working areas, task-oriented instructions, ways to
customize and control processing, and technical information. The guide
is presented in PDF format, allowing you to use hyperlink jumps on
cross-references and other navigation tools in your PDF viewer.

Online Help

OmniPage Pro’s online Help contains information on features, settings,
and procedures. The online Help is provided as HTML help, and has
been designed for quick and easy information retrieval. Comprehensive
context-sensitive help aims to provide just enough assistance to let you
keep working without delay. See “Getting online Help” on page 9.

Readme File

The Readme file contains last-minute information about the software.
Please read it before using OmniPage Pro. To open this HTML file,
choose Readme in the OmniPage Pro Installer or afterwards in the Help
menu.

Scanning and other information

ScanSoft’s web site at www.scansoft.com provides timely information on
the program. The Scanner Guide contains up-dated information about
supported scanners and related issues; ScanSoft tests the 25 most widely

8 Welcome

used scanner models. Access ScanSoft’s web site from the OmniPage Pro
Installer or afterwards from the Help menu.

Using this Guide

This guide is written with the assumption that you know how to work in
the Microsoft Windows environment. Please refer to your Windows
documentation if you have questions about how to use dialog boxes,
menu commands, scroll bars, drag and drop functionality, shortcut
menus, and so on.

We also assume you are familiar with your scanner and its supporting
software, and that the scanner is installed and working correctly before it
is setup with OmniPage Pro 14. Please refer to the scanner’s own
documentation as necessary.

The following conventions are used in this guide:

Bold Introduces new terms and presents sub-headings.
Italic Names topics in the online Help system.

Presents longer option texts in dialog boxes.

Non-serif

Presents file names: sample.tif

A note presents an item of additional information.

A tip presents ideas for using program features to
accomplish specific tasks.

OmniPage Pro 14 Office is a version of the product
designed for more intensive use and is tailored to office
environments. Its added features are denoted through
the guide by this symbol. For a concise listing, see “New
features in OmniPage Pro 14” on page 17.

OmniPage Pro User’s Guide 9

Getting online Help

In addition to using this guide, you can use OmniPage Pro’s online Help
to learn about features, settings, and procedures. Online Help is available
after you install OmniPage Pro.

Online HTML Help

Open OmniPage Pro’s online Help at its top level by choosing Help
Topics at the top of the Help menu. This allows you to see topics
arranged in a Table of Contents, search an alphabetical list of keywords or
make full-text searches through the topics. Other items in the Help menu
provide access to useful topics or web pages.

Press F1 as you are working with the program to see an online help topic
relating to the current screen area, dialog box or warning message.

Context-Sensitive Help

You can get concise on-the-spot information in a popup window about a
particular OmniPage Pro menu item, toolbar button, screen area or
dialog box, in the following ways:

Click the Help tool in the Standard toolbar to get the help icon. Click
this on any item on the desktop outside a dialog box or warning message.

Press Shift + F1 to get the same help icon. Use Shift + F1 to get context­sensitive help for shortcut menu items.

Click the question mark button in the upper right corner of a dialog box
and then click an item in the dialog box to see the popup window.

Some dialog boxes or warning messages have their own Help button, or a
help text. Click the button or the text to get information on the dialog or
message box.

Click anywhere to remove a context-sensitive popup Help window.

10 Welcome

Tech Notes

ScanSoft’s web site at www.scansoft.com contains Tech Notes on
commonly reported issues using OmniPage Pro 14. Web pages may also
offer assistance on the installation process and troubleshooting.

Glossary

This guide does not include a glossary. The online Help has a
comprehensive glossary, with its own alphabetical index and a table of
contents. Please consult it if you want to find the meaning of a term used
in this guide or in the program.

When to go online

This guide concentrates on providing background understanding of
program features, suggesting also what they can be useful for. The online
Help provides mainly numbered procedures. Turn to online Help for the
following items or for grater detail on the following topics:

◆ Keyboard guide

◆ Settings guidelines

◆ Manual training

◆ Export Converter options

◆ Using the Text Editor

◆ On-the-fly zoning and editing

OmniPage Pro User’s Guide 11

Chapter 1

Installation and setup

This chapter provides information on installing and starting OmniPage
Pro 14. It presents the following topics:

◆ System requirements

◆ Installing OmniPage Pro

◆ Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro

◆ How to start the program

◆ Registering your software

◆ New features in OmniPage Pro 14

12 Installation and setup

System requirements

The minimum requirements to install and run OmniPage Pro 14 are:

◆ A computer with an Intel

®

Pentium® III processor or equivalent

◆ Microsoft

®

Windows® 98 (from second edition), Windows Me,

Windows NT

®

4.0 (from Service Pack 6), Windows 2000 (from

Service Pack 2), Windows XP or Windows Server 2003

◆ Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 with at least Service Pack 2

◆ 128MB of memory (RAM), 256MB recommended

◆ 135MB of free hard disk space for application and sample files

plus 40-45MB working space during installation. Additionally:

◆ 20-67 MB per RealSpeak

TM

module (343 MB for 9 languages)

◆ 2 MB per ASR speech recognition language (15MB for 7 languages) *

◆ 18 MB for ScanSoft PDF Converter *

◆ 3.4 MB for ScanSoft PDF Printer Driver *

◆ 5MB for Microsoft Installer (MSI) if not present (it is included

in most Windows operating systems)

◆ Up to 5MB for system updates

◆ An SVGA monitor with 256 colors, but preferably 16-bit color

(called High Color in Windows 2000 and Medium Color in XP)
and a resolution of at least 800 x 600 pixels

◆ A CD-ROM drive for installation

◆ A Windows compatible pointing device

◆ A compatible scanner with its own scanner driver software, if you

plan to scan documents. See the Scanner Guide at ScanSoft’s web
site (www.scansoft.com) for a list of supported scanners

◆ Web access is needed for product registration, Scanner Wizard

database updating and obtaining live updates for the program.

* Supplied with OmniPage Pro 14 Office only.

Performance and speed will be enhanced if your computer’s processor, memory,
and available disk space exceed minimum requirements.

Chapter 1

Installing OmniPage Pro 13

Installing OmniPage Pro

OmniPage Pro 14’s installation program takes you through installation
with instructions on every screen.

Before installing OmniPage Pro:

◆ Close all other applications, especially anti-virus programs.

◆ Log into your computer with administrator privileges if you are

installing on Windows NT, 2000, XP or Server 2003.

◆ If you own a previous version of OmniPage Pro, or if you are

upgrading from demonstration software or an OmniPage Special
Edition, the installer asks your consent to uninstall that product.

! To i n stal l Omni Pa ge Pro:

1. Insert OmniPage Pro’s CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive. The

installation program should start automatically. If it does not start,
locate your CD-ROM drive in Windows Explorer and double-click
the

Autorun.exe program at the top-level of the CD-ROM.

2. Choose a language to use during installation. Accept the End-User

License Agreement and enter the serial number shown on the CD
envelope.

3. Choose a complete or a custom installation. A complete installation

installs all RealSpeak

TM

Text-to-Speech language modules (currently

9). In OmniPage Pro 14 Office, up to 7 ASR-1600™ Speech
Recognition modules are installed. Custom installation lets you
exclude or add modules. To exclude a module, click its down arrow
and select ‘This feature will be installed when required’.

4. Follow the instructions on each screen to install the software. All files

needed for scanning are copied automatically during installation.

Sometimes uninstalling and then reinstalling OmniPage Pro will solve a problem.
See “Uninstalling the software” on page 118.

You can use the Control Panel’s Add/Remove Programs facility to add or remove
RealSpeak or ASR modules later. You will need your installation CD for this.

14 Installation and setup

Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro

All files needed for scanner setup and support are copied automatically
during the program’s installation, but no scanner setup occurs at
installation time. Before using OmniPage Pro 14 for scanning, your
scanner should be installed with its own scanner driver software and
tested for correct functionality. Scanner driver software is not included
with OmniPage Pro.

Scanner setup is done through the Scanner Setup Wizard. You can start
this yourself, as described below. Otherwise, it appears when you first
attempt to perform scanning. Proceed as follows:

◆ Choose Start!All Programs!ScanSoft OmniPage Pro 14.0!

Scanner Wizard
or click the Setup button in the Scanner panel of the Options

dialog box.
or choose Scan in the Get Page drop-down list in the OmniPage

Toolbox and click the Get Page button.

◆ The Scanner Setup Wizard starts. If you have a web connection,

the first panel invites you to update the scanner database supplied
with the wizard. Choose Yes or No and click on Next.

◆ Choose ‘Select and test scanner or digital camera’, then click

Next. If you have a single installed scanner, it appears, along with
any scanners previously set up with OmniPage Pro. If the

required scanner is not listed, click Add Scanner... .

◆ You see a list of all detected scanner drivers in the checkmarked

categories. This can include network devices. Select one and click
OK. To install a second device, you must run the Scanner Wizard
again.

◆ The wizard reports whether the chosen scanner model already

has settings in the scanner database. If it does, you do not need to
test it. If it does not, you should test it. Click on Next.

◆ If you chose not to test, click Finish. If you chose testing, click

Next to have the scanner connection tested. If the connection is
in order, you see a menu of further tests. Choose which testing
steps you want to run. The Basic test scan is recommended.

Chapter 1

Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro 15

◆ By default OmniPage Pro uses its own scanning interface, located

in the Scanner panel of the Options dialog box. If you want to
use your scanner’s own interface instead, choose Advanced
settings and select this. Choose Modify hints only if you are
experienced in configuring scanners or have been advised by
Technical Support to do so.

◆ Click Next to start the tests. For the Basic scan test, insert a test

page into your scanner. The wizard will scan using your scanner
manufacturer’s software. Click on Next. Your scanner’s native
user-interface will appear.

◆ Click on Scan to begin the sample scan.

◆ If necessary, click on Missing Image… or Improper

Orientation... and make the appropriate selections.

◆ Once the image appears correctly in the window, click on Next.

◆ Move through the remaining requested tests, following the

instructions on the screen.

◆ When all the requested tests have been completed successfully,

the Scanner Wizard reports and invites you to click on Finish.

◆ You have successfully configured your scanner to work with

OmniPage Pro 14!

To change the scanner settings at a later time, or to setup or remove a
scanner, reopen the Scanner Setup Wizard from the Windows Start menu
or from the Scanner panel of the Options dialog box.

To test and repair an improperly functioning scanner, open the wizard
and select ‘Test the current scanner or digital camera’ in the second panel,
then work through the procedure described above, maybe using advice
received from Technical Support.

To specify a different default scanner, open the wizard to reach the list of
setup scanners. Move the highlight to the desired scanner and be sure to
close the wizard with Finish.

To get updated settings for your current scanner, open the wizard, request
a fresh database download in the first screen, then choose ‘Use current
settings with current device’, click Next and then Finish.

16 Installation and setup

How to start the program

To start OmniPage Pro 14 do one of the following:

◆ Click Start in the Windows taskbar and choose All Programs!

ScanSoft OmniPage Pro 14.0!OmniPage Pro 14.0.

◆ Double-click the OmniPage Pro icon in the program’s

installation folder or on the Windows desktop if placed there.

◆ Double-click an OmniPage Document (OPD) icon or file name;

the clicked document is loaded into the program. See
“OmniPage Documents” on page 29.

◆ Right click one or more image file icons or file names for a

shortcut menu. Select Open With... OmniPage Pro application.
The images are loaded into the program.

On opening, OmniPage Pro’s title screen is displayed and then its
desktop. See “The OmniPage Desktop” on page 22. It provides an
introduction to the program’s main working areas.

There are several ways of running the program with a limited interface:

◆ Use the Batch Manager program. Click Start in the Windows

taskbar and choose All Programs!ScanSoft OmniPage Pro

14.0! OmniPage Batch Manager. See page 47.

◆ Click Acquire Text from the File menu of an application

registered with the Direct OCR™ facility. See “How to set up
Direct OCR” on page 44.

◆ Right-click on one or more image file icons or file names for a

shortcut menu. Select OmniPage Pro 14 and choose a target
format or a workflow from its sub-menu. The files will be
processed according to the workflow instructions. See page 96.

◆ Click the OmniPage icon on the taskbar. Choose a workflow to

start the program and run the workflow. In OmniPage Pro 14
Office, voice selection of workflow is possible.

◆ Use OmniPage Pro 14 with ScanSoft’s PaperPort

®

or Pagis®
document management products, to add OCR services. See
“How to use OmniPage Pro with PaperPort” on page 46.

Chapter 1

Registering your software 17

Registering your software

ScanSoft’s online registration runs at the end of installation. Please ensure
web access is available. We provide an easy electronic form that can be
completed in less than five minutes. When the form is filled, click
Submit. If you did not register the software during installation, you will
be periodically invited to register later. You can go to www.scansoft.com
to register online. Click on Support and from the main support screen
choose Register in the left-hand column. For a statement on the use of
your registration data, please see ScanSoft’s Privacy Policy.

New features in OmniPage Pro 14

The OmniPage® product family is augmented by OmniPage Pro 14. If
you are upgrading, you may not need to consult this guide very much.
Here are some main areas of innovation compared to OmniPage Pro 12.
Features unique to OmniPage Pro 14 Office have the Office icon:

Feature Description See

Higher accuracy

A new recognition and parsing engine, four years in development, delivers
even better OCR accuracy.

page 31

Improved layout retention

This engine also delivers superior page layout retention with True Page and
Flowing Page formatting levels. Text flows better round irregular pictures.

page 83

Workflows and instant access

Save workflows to perform recurring tasks without having to take care of indi­vidual settings each time. Run workflows instantly from your taskbar.

page 93

Drag-and-drop recognition

Select a zone and drag it into the working area of a target application. Graphics
are pasted as image, text is recognized and pasted.

page 89

Adjustable recognition speed

Recognition performance can be optimized for greater speed or greater accu­racy. On good quality documents even faster processing gives good results.

page 31

Speed zoning

Do manual zoning quickly. See auto-detected zones and double-click on any of
them to turn them into real zones.

page 59

Financial dictionary

An English financial dictionary is added to the existing legal and medical pro­fessional dictionaries, available for several languages.

page 31

Character validation

Validate individual accented letters for recognition, in addition to those enabled
by the language choice.

page 31

Bullets and numbering

Bulleted and numbered paragraphs can be detected. Bullets and numbering
can be inserted, removed and edited in the Text Editor.

page 73

More portable OPDs

Save to OmniPage Document (Extended) to have training files, user dictionar­ies or zone templates embedded in the OPD.

page 29

18 Installation and setup

A more complete list of features and differences appears in online Help.

Feature Description See Office

Colored backgrounds

Get better recognition of text printed on color or shaded back­grounds. There is also improved noise removal.

page 49

Resolution control

Choose the resolution for saved page images and for images
embedded in recognized pages.

page 85

Improved proofing system

The two parts of words hyphenated at line ends are now joined.
The image viewer and the verifier display both image parts.

page 65

Concurrent saving

Create multiple converters to save to more than one file type in
one step: for example save page images and recognized pages.

page 86

Audio book publishing

Save recognized texts as WAV audio files. Transfer these to CD to
have scanned documents read aloud anytime - even on the move.

page 116

Voice read-back

ScanSoft RealSpeak as the Text-to-Speech solution provides bet­ter quality voices in more languages for having text read aloud.

page 76

Batch Manager

Redesign of the previous Schedule OCR facility gives more control
and better overview for unattended processing of pre-defined jobs.

page 101

Smart Folders

Jobs can take input from watched folders, with better handling of
multiple folders. Background processing runs whenever image
files are sent to these folders. Recurring jobs are supported.

page 104

Barcode cover pages

Start a workflow by placing a barcode cover page in a scanner on
top of your document. Cover page image files can start image file
workflows.

page 106

Greater PDF support

Generate tagged, signed and encrypted Portable Document Files.
Allow reading of tags when PDF files are opened to improve layout
retention.

page 88

Open PDF files in MS Word

ScanSoft enables PDF files to be converted to Word documents
when working in Microsoft Word, without using OmniPage Pro.

page 89

Export to Office 2003

Support for Microsoft Word 2003 (Word ML). In OmniPage Pro 14
Office support is added for Microsoft Reader (.LIT) and maintained
for the XML and eBook file types.

page 116

Voice control

Start workflows and control proofing corrections by voice com­mands in a number of languages, using the included ScanSoft
ASR-1600 voice recognition modules.

page 107

SharePoint, DMS and FTP

Take image files from Microsoft SharePoint, any ODMA-compliant
Document Management System (DMS) or an FTP site and export
files to these locations for storage or group use.

page 92

Print to PDF functionality

Create searchable, editable PDF files from text files, such as Word
documents. OmniPage Pro installs a PDF printer driver that
becomes available in all your print-capable applications.

page 88

OmniPage Pro User’s Guide 19

Chapter 2

Introduction

You probably use your computer for business correspondence, preparing
reports, handling data and an ever-increasing number of other uses. The
challenge is that, in spite of the digital revolution, certain sources of
information still circulate in printed, paper form and cannot be used
immediately in a computer.

For example, if you want to incorporate information from a magazine
article in a report you are preparing, you somehow have to get the text
from the article into your computer. Painstakingly retyping the article is
not an appealing solution.

This chapter introduces you to the solution: optical character recognition
(OCR). It describes how OmniPage Pro 14 uses OCR technology to
transform text from scanned pages or image files into editable text for use
in your favorite computer applications.

We present the following topics:

◆ What is optical character recognition

• Documents in OmniPage Pro

• Basic processing steps

◆ The OmniPage Desktop

◆ Managing documents

◆ OmniPage Documents

◆ Settings

20 Introduction

What is optical character recognition

Optical character recognition is the process of extracting text from an
image. This image can result from scanning a paper document or
opening an electronic image file. Images do not have editable text
characters; they have many tiny dots (pixels) that together form character
shapes. These present a picture of the text on a page.

During OCR, OmniPage Pro analyzes the character shapes in an image
and defines solutions to produce editable text. After OCR, you can save
the resulting text to a variety of word-processing, desktop publishing or
spreadsheet applications.

OmniPage Pro’s OCR capabilities

In addition to text recognition, OmniPage Pro can retain the following
elements of a document through the OCR process.

Graphics

Photos, logos, and drawings are examples of graphics.

Tex t f o rm a t t in g

Font types, sizes and styles (such as bold, italic and underlines

) are
examples of character formatting. Indents, tabs, margins and line spacing
are examples of paragraph formatting.

Page formatting

Column structure, table formats, and placement of graphics and headings
are examples of page formatting.

The graphics, text and page formatting elements that OmniPage Pro
retains are determined by the settings you select. Refer to the Settings
Guidelines in the online Help for more information about selecting
settings.

OmniPage Pro only recognizes machine-generated characters such as offset or laser­printed or typewritten text. However, it can retain handwritten text, such as a
signature, as a graphic.

Chapter 2

What is optical character recognition 21

Documents in OmniPage Pro

OmniPage Pro 14 handles documents one at a time. When you acquire
your first image (from scanner or from file) a new document is started.
Further acquired images are added to the same document, until you save
and close it.

A document in OmniPage Pro consists of one image for each document
page. After you perform OCR, the document will also contain recognized
text, displayed in the Text Editor, possibly along with graphics and tables.
See “The OmniPage Desktop” on page 22.

Basic processing steps

There are three ways of handling documents: with automatic, manual or
workflow processing. See “Automatic processing” on page 38, “Manual
processing” on page 40 and “Workflows” on page 94. The basic steps for
all processing methods are broadly the same:

1. Bring a set of images into OmniPage Pro.

You can scan a paper document with or without an Automatic
Document Feeder (ADF) or load one or more image files. The
resulting images can appear as thumbnails in the Image Panel along
with the image of the first page entered. The document pages are
summarized in the Document Manager. See “Defining the source of
page images” on page 48.

2. Perform OCR to generate editable text.

During OCR, OmniPage Pro creates zones around elements on the
page that will be processed, and then interprets text characters or
graphics in each zone. Manual and template zoning are also possible.
After OCR, you can check and correct errors in the document using
the OCR Proofreader and edit the document in the Text Editor.

3. Export the document to the desired location.

You can save your document to a specified file name and type, place
it on the Clipboard, send it as a mail attachment or publish it. You
can save it as an OmniPage Document (OPD) as described later. You
can save the same document repeatedly to different destinations,
different file types, with different settings and levels of formatting.
See “Saving and exporting” on page 79.

22 Introduction

The OmniPage Desktop

The OmniPage Desktop has a title bar and a menu bar along the top and
a status bar along the bottom. It has three main working areas, separated
by splitters: the Document Manager, the Image Panel and the Text
Editor. Each has close, maximize and restore buttons top right. The
Image Panel has an Image toolbar and the Text Editor has a Formatting
toolbar.

Standard toolbar
OmniPage

Toolbox

Thumbnails show a
picture of each page
in the document.

The current page
has an “eye” icon.

This page has been
recognized.

Page navigation
buttons

Buttons to show or hide the
Document Manager, Text
Editor and the Image
Panel’s thumbnails and
current page display. This
can also be done from the
View menu.

Image toolbar

Image Panel:

This is displaying the image of the current
page, together with its zones. The image
panel can display the current page,
thumbnails, or both.

Drag these splitters to
resize the working areas.

The Text Editor view
buttons offer three
formatting levels.

Text Editor:

This is displaying the
recognition results from the
current page in True Page
view.

Formatting toolbar

Chapter 2

The OmniPage Desktop 23

We show the program with a three-page document. Page one is the
current page, which has been recognized and proofed. Page two has been
recognized but not proofed yet. Page three has been acquired and
manually zoned, but not recognized yet. The icons at the bottom of the
thumbnail images show page status.

Status bar buttons let you show or hide the main screen areas and move
to other pages in the document. A right mouse click in any screen area
brings up a shortcut menu with the most useful commands for that area.

The Menu bar

For concise information on any menu item, click the context-sensitive
help button and then click a menu item. A popup text explains the
purpose of the menu item. Click anywhere to close the popup.

The Toolbars

The program has three main toolbars; all can be floated. Use the View
menu to show, hide or customize them. Context-sensitive help explains
the purpose of all tools. Two further toolbars govern specific tasks.

Toolbar

Default
location

Other docking
locations

Purpose

Standard

Horizontal under
Menu bar

Any edge of the
OmniPage Desktop

Performing basic program functions.
See page 29 and page 65.

Image

Vertically to left of
current page image

Vertically to right of
current page image

Image, zoning and table operations.
See page 53 and page 59.

Formatting

Horizontal at top of
Text E d i tor

None

Formatting recognized text in the
Text Editor. See page 73.

Verifier

Hover the cursor over the verifier window
to see this floating toolbar.

Controlling the location and appear­ance of the verifier. See page 67.

Reorder

Click the Change reading order tool. This
toolbar replaces the Formatting toolbar.

Modifying the order of elements in
recognized pages. See page 73.

24 Introduction

The Image Panel

When this displays the current page image, the Image toolbar is available.
All page images have a background value: process or ignore. Zones can be
manually drawn on page images, or can be placed automatically after
recognition. There are five zone types: Process, Ignore, Text, Table,
Graphics. Areas inside process zones and on a process background outside
other zones have zones automatically drawn and their zone types
determined during processing. See “Zones and backgrounds” on page 53.

If the current page image is hidden, the thumbnails appear in rows to
make the best use of the available space.

The Text Editor

This displays recognition results in any of three formatting levels:

No Formatting view (NF)

Retain Fonts and Paragraphs view (RFP)
True Page (TP)

The True Page

®

formatting level retains page layout using text, table and

picture boxes, and frames. It can display multicolumn areas, to show text
blocks that can be treated as flowing columns at export time. Tru e Page is
also an export formatting level, along with Flowing Page that retains page
layout without boxes and frames. See page 64.

In both the Image Panel and Text Editor, the shortcut menu (right mouse
click) allows you to zoom in our out on the display. The standard toolbar
also provides a zoom control.

Chapter 2

The OmniPage Desktop 25

The OmniPage Toolbox

This Toolbox lets you drive the processing. By default it is located along
the top of the OmniPage Desktop, just above the working areas. It can be
floated and also be docked along the bottom of the desktop.

Automatic processing is started, and can be stopped and re-started with
the Start button when “1-2-3” is selected in the Workflow drop-down
list. See “Automatic processing” on page 38.

Manual processing allows you to process documents page-by-page and
step-by-step. Start each step (again with “1-2-3” selected) with the three
large buttons: the Get Page button (1), the Perform OCR button (2) and
the Export Results button (3). See “Manual processing” on page 40.

You can switch between automatic and manual processing any time the
program is not busy with processing. That means you can switch between
them while you are working within a document. You can automatically
process some pages, then add more pages with manual processing. After
processing a stack of pages automatically, you can inspect the results and
then go back to reprocess certain pages manually. This procedure is
described in chapter 3. See “Combined processing” on page 41.

Workflow proc e s s ing is designed for performing repeated tasks
efficiently. Select New Workflow... in the Workflow drop-down list and
click Start. The Workflow Assistant helps you define a workflow that can
be saved for repeated use. See “Workflow Assistant” on page 98.

Start/Stop button Get Page button

Perform OCR button Export Results button

Get Pages
drop-down list

Layout Description
drop-down list

Export Results
drop-down list

Workflow drop­down list with two
sample workflows
and a user-defined
one.

26 Introduction

Managing documents

Document management can be done by thumbnails in the Image Panel
or by the Document Manager, situated along the bottom of the
OmniPage Desktop. Both summarize the pages in the document and are
synchronized. Our pictures show these with the same seven-page
document. Pages 1 and 2 are selected and page 4 is the current page, that
is, the one shown in the Image Panel. Page status is shown as follows:

Thumbnails

These present a set of numbered thumbnail images, one for each page in the
document. Scroll to see pages as necessary. The current page has an ‘eye’
icon. You can select multiple pages in the document; these have a distinctive
appearance. Use thumbnails for page operations, as follows:

Jump to a page: Click the thumbnail of the desired page.

Reorder a page: Click the thumbnail of the page you want to move and

drag it above the desired page number. Pages are renumbered
automatically.

Delete a page: Select the thumbnail of the page you want to delete and
press the Delete key.

Select multiple pages: Hold down the Shift key and click two
thumbnails to select all pages between and including them. Hold down

Page Status Icon Page image has been...

1 Acquired acquired but has not yet been recognized.

2 Recognized

recognized, but not proofread, or proofing
was interrupted on the page.

3

Recognized,
Proofed

recognized, and proofing has reached the
end of the page.

4 Modified

recognized with at least one editing or for­matting change made in the Text Editor.

5

Modified,
proofed

recognized, edited in the Text Editor, and
proofing has reached the end of the page.

6 Pending

acquired, maybe recognized; some zone
changes are stored but not yet processed.

7 Saved recognized and saved at least once.

Chapter 2

Managing documents 27

the Ctrl key as you click thumbnails to add pages to a selection one by
one. Then you can move or delete the selected pages as a group, or send
them to (re)recognition. You can also export selected pages.

Document Manager

This provides an overview of your document with a table. Each row
represents one page. Columns present statistical or status information for
each page, and (where appropriate) document totals. The picture shows
columns that a user has specified.

The current page is shown with an ‘eye’ icon. You can use the Document
Manager for page operations, as follows:

Jump to a page: Click the leftmost part of the page row or double click
anywhere in its row.

Reorder a page: Click the row of the page you want to move and drag it
to the desired location. An indicator on the left shows where the page will
be inserted. Pages are renumbered automatically.

Delete a page: Select the row of the page you want to delete and press the
Delete key.

Select multiple pages: Hold down the Shift key and click two page rows
to select all pages between and including them. Hold down the Ctrl key
as you click rows to add pages to a selection one by one. Then you can
move or delete the selected pages as a group, or send them to
(re)recognition. You can also export selected pages.

Get information on an image by hovering the cursor over it with Image Info
enabled in the image panel shortcut menu. A popup text displays the image size in
pixels and the program’s unit of measurement. Image resolution is also shown.

Enter
comments or
searchable
keywords
here.

Move the
cursor onto the
page’s status
icon to see a
thumbnail of
the page.

28 Introduction

When multiple pages are being selected, the page set as current does not
change. All selected pages are highlighted.

Customizing Document Manager columns

You can specify which columns of information you want to see in the
Document Manager. Click Customize Columns... in the View menu for
the following dialog box:

Define which columns should appear, their widths, and column order.
The topic Customizing Document Manager columns in online Help
clarifies what is presented in each column. You can change column
widths easily in the Document Manager; just drag the column dividers in
the title bar.

Deleting pages from a document

Page deletions must be confirmed and can be undone. Delete the current
page only with the item Delete Current Page in the Edit menu. Delete all
selected pages in the Document Manager or from the thumbnails by
pressing the Delete key or using the shortcut menu command Clear.

Click a checkbox
to select the item.

This item is
highlighted.

Image sizes are
expressed in
pixels.

Define a width for
the highlighted
item.

Highlight an
item and use
these arrows to
change the
order of
columns.

Chapter 2

OmniPage Documents 29

Printing a document

You can print the document with the Print item in the File menu.
Choose whether to print images or text (that is, recognition results as
they appear in the Text Editor). You can print all pages or a range of
pages. The Print tool in the Standard toolbar prints images or text,
depending whether the Image Panel or the Text Editor is active.

Closing a document

Choose Close in the File menu to close a document. You are prompted to
save your document if you have not saved it or you have modified it since
the last save. See the next section on saving the document as an
OmniPage Document (*.opd). You will also be prompted to save unsaved
training data if you selected ‘Prompt to save training data when closing
document’ in the Proofing panel of the Options dialog box.

OmniPage Documents

The OmniPage Document is the program’s proprietary file type; it has
the extension .opd. You save the document to the OPD file type if you
want to work with it again in OmniPage Pro during a future session. You
can then process unfinished pages, add more pages and proof or edit
recognition results.

An OmniPage Document contains the original page images (deskewed
and pre-processed) with any zones placed on them. After recognition, the
OPD also contains the recognition results. Recognized characters are
stored along with their coordinate and confidence data. This preserves
the links between image and text, so that verification and proofing
remain available when the OPD is reopened in future sessions.

When you save an OmniPage Document, the current settings (and
unsaved training) are also saved. When you open an OmniPage
Document, its settings are applied, replacing those existing in the
program.

30 Introduction

Why save to OPD

You do not have to save your documents to the OPD file type. You would
typically do this for the following reasons:

◆ You cannot finish working with the document in the current

session.

◆ You want to pass the document to other users who have

OmniPage Pro. For example, you can pass an OPD file to a
specialist for proofing. In an office network, you may have one
scanner generating images for recognition and proofing at several
workstations.

◆ You want to build up an archive of recognized documents whose

original images remain accessible. The recognized texts allow
searching by keywords and other document retrieval techniques.

How to save to OPD

Saving to OPD is done from the File menu, or by using the Save button
in the Standard toolbar. The title bar shows the OmniPage Document file
name. If you intend to create an OPD, you can save it to this file type at
an early stage, for protection. Then use the Save button to save it
periodically as you work. Save it again at the end of your session.

When you close the document or exit the program, you will be prompted
to save the document as an OPD. You can include one or more saves to
the OPD file type in a workflow, along with steps to save images or
recognition results to other file types, see “Creating workflows” on
page 98.

Recognition results should be saved from OPD files before installing any
OmniPage Pro upgrade. These files may not be upwards compatible to newer
OPD file formats, or possibly only the images will be retained when the files are
upgraded. When you open an OPD created by OmniPage Pro 10, only images are
loaded. When you open an OPD created by OmniPage Pro 11, images and
recognized pages are loaded, but no zones are retained. All three are retained in
OPD files originating from OmniPage Pro 12.