Optical Character Recognition to read index data from scanned images, convert documents to searchable PDF or text files, dynamic field extraction and other OCR features.
Language Pack for Standard/Tesseract OCR
All versions of the SimpleIndex software include OCR with the Standard/Tesseract OCR engine. The SimpleIndex download only includes a limited set of languages with the installation. If the language you would like to OCR with SimpleIndex isn’t one of the languages included then you can download your required language(s). Once you do this you will be able to pick the language that you want to read with the Standard/Tesseract OCR engine.
- Go to the Tesseract Language Download Site
- Select the language you want and download or download all the language
- Copy the language files (unzip if downloading more than one language) to this folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\Tesseract\v3.04\tessdata
- Close and Reopen SimpleIndex and the downloaded languages will now be selectable
Languages Supported in SimpleSoftware OCR Engines
SimpleSoftware OCR engines are using two different systems for language support. In the end languages supported by your OCR is based on your version of SimpleIndex installed, any addons (SimpleIndex Server, SimpleCoversheet, and so on) do not add any additional language support.
All SimpleSoftware products have Tesseract 3.02 OCR languages support. You can learn more about it and download additional language libraries HERE. And you can check and add more OCR languages libraries supported with Tesseract on your station here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\Tesseract\v3.02\tessdata
SimpleIndex Pro and SimpleIndex OCR are using FineReader engine. It has one of the largest libraries of supported OCR languages. You can check OCR languages supported with FineReader on your station here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\OCRLanguages.txt
Abkhaz
Adyghe
Afrikaans
Agul
Albanian
Altaic
Armenian Eastern
Armenian Grabar
Armenian Western
Awar
Aymara
Azeri Cyrillic
Azeri Latin
Bashkir
Basque
Belarusian
Bemba
Blackfoot
Breton
Bugotu
Bulgarian
Buryat
Catalan
Chamorro
Chechen
Chukcha
Chuvash
Corsican
Crimean Tatar
Croatian
Crow
Czech
Danish
Dargwa
Dungan
Dutch Belgian
Dutch Standard
English
English Australian
English Belize
English Canadian
English Caribbean
English Ireland
English Jamaica
English Law
English Medical
English New Zealand
English Philippines
English South Africa
English Trinidad
English United Kingdom
English United States
English Zimbabwe
Eskimo Cyrillic
Eskimo Latin
Esperanto
Estonian
Even
Evenki
Faeroese
Fijian
Finnish
French
French Belgian
French Canadian
French Luxembourg
French Monaco
French Standard
French Swiss
Frisian
Friulian
Gaelic Scottish
Gagauz
Galician
Ganda
German
German Austrian
German Law
German Liechtenstein
German Luxembourg
German Medical
German New Spelling
German New Spelling Law
German New Spelling Medical
German Standard
German Swiss
Greek
Guarani
Hani
Hausa
Hawaiian
Hungarian
Icelandic
Ido
Indonesian
Ingush
Interlingua
Irish
Italian
Italian Standard
Italian Swiss
Kabardian
Kalmyk
Karachay Balkar
Karakalpak
Kasub
Kawa
Kazakh
Khakas
Khanty
Kikuyu
Kirgiz
Kongo
Koryak
Kpelle
Kumyk
Kurdish
Lak
Lappish
Latin
Latvian
Latvian Gothic
Lezgin
Lithuanian
Lithuanian Classic
Luba
Macedonian
Malagasy
Malay Brunei Darussalam
Malay Malaysian
Malinke
Maltese
Mansi
Maori
Mari
Maya
Miao
Minankabaw
Mohawk
Mongol
Mordvin
Nahuatl
Nenets
Nivkh
Nogay
Norwegian Bokmal
Norwegian Nynorsk
Null
Nyanja
Occidental
Ojibway
Old English
Old French
Old German
Old Italian
Old Spanish
Ossetic
Papiamento
Pidgin English
Polish
Portuguese Brazilian
Portuguese Standard
Provencal
Quechua
Rhaeto Romanic
Romanian
Romanian Moldavia
Romany
Ruanda
Rundi
Russian
Russian Moldavia
Russian Old Spelling
Samoan
Selkup
Serbian Cyrillic
Serbian Latin
Shona
Sioux
Slovak
Slovenian
Somali
Sorbian
Sotho
Spanish
Spanish Argentina
Spanish Bolivia
Spanish Chile
Spanish Colombia
Spanish Costa Rica
Spanish Dominican Republic
Spanish Ecuador
Spanish El Salvador
Spanish Guatemala
Spanish Honduras
Spanish Mexican
Spanish Modern Sort
Spanish Nicaragua
Spanish Panama
Spanish Paraguay
Spanish Peru
Spanish Puerto Rico
Spanish Traditional Sort
Spanish Uruguay
Spanish Venezuela
Sunda
Swahili
Swazi
Swedish
Swedish Finland
Tabassaran
Tagalog
Tahitian
Tajik
Tatar
Tinpo
Tongan
Tswana
Tun
Turkish
Turkmen
Tuvin
Udmurt
Uighur Cyrillic
Uighur Latin
Ukrainian
Uzbek Cyrillic
Uzbek Latin
Visayan
Welsh
Wolof
Xhosa
Yakut
Yiddish
Zapotec
Zulu
What is Document Imaging?
Document Imaging was the more commonly used term in the early days of document scanning and OCR and refers to any system used to replicate documents used in business. It evolved from the microfilm days where it was referred to as Document Image Management.
Document Imaging allows for the scanning of paper documents, as well as the processing of files saved electronically. These files are then named and saved for later searching.
Other document imaging terms include automatic imaging software, best digital imaging software, best imaging software, desktop imaging software, digital document imaging, digital imaging software, document imaging download, document imaging PDF, document imaging processing, document imaging products, document imaging software, document imaging solution, document imaging solutions, document imaging systems, document imaging technologies, document imaging technology, document imaging tools, image to database, imaging resource, imaging scanning software, imaging software companies, imaging software download, imaging software for windows, imaging solution, scanner imaging software, scanning and imaging, scanning imaging, and software for imaging.
Change the Dictionary Separator Value
This is used to change the dictionary separator value when doing thesaurus matching from the default character of | to any character(s) that you want. This can be useful in cases where the values you would like in your list or dictionary might include the pipe character or “|” or “Shift Backslash”
This setting is also used as the delimiter when parsing multiple index field values from bar codes (e.g. field1|field2|field3).
Instructions for changing the dictionary separator value:
- Right click on the Job Configuration file that you would like to suppress the prompt on and select Open With>Notepad
- Search the XML settings text open in Notepad for this term:
<OCR_DICT_SEPARATOR> - Change the value in-between from “|” to any other single character that you want.
- For TAB separation use %TAB%
Change the OCR Font or Type
This is used to changed the default OCR recognition font or type from the default, which is “To Be Detected”. This can be used to look for a specific type of OCR font and is especially useful for recognizing things like Dotmatrix, OCR A and OCR B.
Instructions for setting OCR Font:
1. Right click on the .sic file and select Open With a text editor (Notepad, Wordpad, etc.)
2. Find <OCR_TEXT_TYPE>. If you can’t find <OCR_TEXT_TYPE> then add the following as the last row in the text file:
<OCR_TEXT_TYPE>#</OCR_TEXT_TYPE>
3. Change the number in between: <OCR_TEXT_TYPE>#</OCR_TEXT_TYPE>
4. Number of desired font:
- 0 Normal
- 1 Typewriter
- 2 Dotmatrix
- 3 Index
- 5 OCR A
- 6 OCR B
- 7 MICR E13B
- 8 MICR CMC7
- 9 Gothic
- 10 To Be Detected
5. Close and save file
I’m using full page OCR. The information is all appearing in the txt file but it is losing format about half way through. Data to the right is ending up at the end of the txt doc. Can this be fixed?
SimpleIndex version 7 solves this problem with the incorporation of the FineReader OCR engine. Full text in PDFs will now flow with the formatting of the PDF.
Legacy Versions: SimpleIndex can also be used with other OCR applications and servers to improve accuracy, formatting and performance. Use the OCR applications to convert the scanned images to text or searchable PDF, and SimpleIndex can extract index values from the text and automatically sort and organize the files.
- Published in OCR
If I have a form which is filled manually by hand, can SimpleIndex read the data from it?
No, SimpleIndex cannot read handwriting. You would have to type this information in manually.
Find out more about ICR (Handprint Recognition) software on the SimpleOCR ICR Guide.
- Published in OCR
How do you train the OCR engine for better accuracy?
Training has been removed with version 7 due to the addition of the ABBYY FineReader OCR engine.
- Published in OCR
How do you configure full text searching in Retrieval mode?
On the Database tab there dropdown in the lower portion of the panel for Full Text OCR Field. Put the name of the field that will store the full-text data there. This must be configured both for Insert and Retrieval mode configurations. The database field needs to be sufficient length to store the entire text of your document.
Of course, the Insert Mode configuration must have “Enable Full Page OCR” checked to generate full text data from images. Text from MS Office documents, PDF files and existing OCR text files can be used without setting this option.
When designing your Retrieval Mode configuration, create a Text field to use for full text search queries. On the Database tab, set the corresponding “Database Field Name” to the full text database field.
When searching on your full text field, SimpleIndex finds the text you enter no matter where it appears in the document. It is able to match partial words. It does not perform boolean or natural language searches. The text entered must match the document text exactly.
- Published in Database & Retrieval, OCR
How can I improve recognition rates for my OCR fields?
There are several things you can do to improve accuracy for OCR.
- Scan at 300dpi, black & white for best results.
- Adjust the scan settings to remove background noise and improve the definition of characters.
- For Zone OCR, field recognition can often vary based on the surrounding white space and text in the zone. Try varying the size of the zone to achieve optimal results.
- For template matching, make sure all variations of the field format are included in the template list.
- For dictionary matching, add common variations and OCR mistakes to the “thesaurus” list.
- On the Zones & OCR tab (accessed from the Job Options) you can adjust the Max Errors setting to allow for more mistakes in the dictionary matching process.
- Use the Strip Spaces, Strip Characters, Replace Characters and Case Fixing options to standardize the field format prior to matching.
Please refer to the SimpleIndex Wiki for details on how to configure these options.
Related Links
- SimpleIndex.com – Zone OCR
- SimpleIndex.com – Dynamic OCR
- SimpleOCR.com – OCR Guide
- SimpleIndex Wiki – OCR
- SimpleIndex Wiki – OCR Options
- SimpleIndex Wiki – Zone OCR
- SimpleIndex Wiki – Full Page OCR
- SimpleIndex Wiki – Zones & OCR Settings
- SimpleIndex Wiki – OCR to Field
- SimpleIndex Wiki – OCR Text View
- SimpleIndex Wiki – Template & Dictionary Matching OCR
- SimpleIndex Wiki – OMR and OCR Document Separation
- Published in OCR
Can OCR text be saved to Office, Text, HTML or other formats?
Yes. On the OCR step of the Job Settings Wizard you can select the text output format need in the “Full-page OCR file type” drop down. By default it is set to PDF, but can be changed to Text (txt), Word (docx), Rich Text (rtf), Open Office (odt), Excel (xlsx), PowerPoint (pptx), ePub Zip (epub), FictionBook (fb2), HTML (htm), XML (xml) or Alto XML (alto.xml).
If the output file type is set to PDF, OCR text will be embedded as hidden text in the PDF file.
Related Links
- Published in Licensing & Installation, OCR
Can SimpleIndex create searchable PDF Image+Text files with hidden text?
Yes, it can. You can configure this setting in the Job Settings Wizard by going to the OCR step and checking “Enable full-page OCR”. There are many settings in the OCR step that you can used to customize the output and recognition of images.
SimpleIndex has two different OCR engines (Standard and Professional) that can be used to produced PDF Image + Text files or Searchable PDFs.
Related Links
- Published in Export, OCR, Office PDF Text Processing