Prizmo4.0.3

Prizmo 3.5 seems to have greatly improved OCR accuracy when you don't have high-quality scanned material in very high DPI to work with (if you don't have like 300 DPI or 600 DPI images, like what someone would want to use for OCR usually)... for example, I opened a picture of a newspaper in the Preview.app and that image had only about 150 DPI... individual lowercase letters on that image were about 5px wide (I zoomed in first to count the pixels, then pressed CMD+0 to zoom out)... and I first tried it with the Menu Bar tool, to just select that part of the screen where that image was and get text copied to the clipboard... and the recognized text was mostly accurate (there were some small errors in some places, but only a minimal amount of manual corrections was needed... and I'm very satisfied with how accurate it was considering that letters on that image were pixelated and I understand that it can be very difficult for an OCR app to distinguish between some characters if letters on some image are only about 5 px wide... and as I mentioned, that was just a quick OCR with that Menu Bar tool). So for that I would give it 5 stars... But I was kind of disappointed that they removed some languages... I'm especially disappointed that OCR for Hebrew is missing because that's not the same like if one of the languages that uses Latin or Cyrillic script was removed, since if two languages use almost the same alphabet (or exactly the same in some cases), then OCR for one mostly works for another language which uses that alphabet (and maybe it would only need some corrections here and there or something like that)... but Hebrew has it's own alphabet, so if Hebrew isn't supported in some version of the app, you can't do OCR for it at all with that version of the app. But at least the previous version still works... so I'm not going to reduce the amount of stars for this rating, since I hope that they will bring back Hebrew and make OCR for it more accurate.

I tried the demo version and I especially liked that Menu Bar tool to get the text from screenshots, so I wouldn't have to retype them if I have to get some text from a screenshot. Although OCR software can sometimes make a mistake if the letters on some picture aren't very clear and the demo version additionally replaces random words with characters like this "••••••••", it's still easier to make corrections here and there and to retype some words than to retype everything manually if the scanned image has more than a few words. I think it's one of the best OCR apps for Mac, but it's kind of expensive for me, since I don't need to use OCR software a lot... and usually I only need it for getting text from screenshots... so I mostly just used that Menu Bar tool that Prizmo has... but if they have some sale or a discount, I would definitely consider getting it. BTW... I wish there was an option to just always have that Menu Bar tool in the Menu Bar, without having to open the app to use it.

3.19 is very, very slow on a 4k imac with 10.11.3....I need 3.18 please. I am a registered user. Can anyone help me. please. Simple things take forever now. Sorry I updated the app.

For a lot of users Prizmo can see like a real niche tool, however i have found it useful in some of the most bizarre aways in my regular workflow. When i look to buy any software--like any other tool--i look at the perceived ROI. I have to admit that Prizmo didn't seem like it had much at first. However i had first gotten a copy as part of some other flash-sale like deal in the past, and started using it for 1 feature alone and have found it useful in a handful of small, strange ways since. My first real use for this too was as a fast way to unskew whiteboard pictures--i am a mobile application developer, and since cellular cameras have gotten so good, we rarely copy them down in notes anymore--I had an iPhone App for this, many actually, but found them to be reasonably rough to use on such a small screen. Now i just send them to myself as i take them, use Prizmo to straiten up on my Mac and save them to Evernote. The completely unexpected use i found was the handiness of having a live on-screen OCR tool. What i mean by that is Prizmo can sit in your menu bar--not a new feature so many apps do it, i now have too to simply manage that--however, one thing i do find really cool is you can tell it to OCR the screen, it will give you a cross hair cursor and you can lasso a portion of your screen, it will then OCR that section and copy it to your clipboard for further processing. I use this to copy content from things like the Mac AppStore, UI elements that I'm putting in documentation and would like the exact text too, extracting text out of protected PDFs for simple things such as extracting times and costs rather than retyping it all--did this for my mortgage, put it through Soulver and saved me and full of pricing questions--its an incredible feature, and since i use many Virtual Machines for my job (Linux, Windows) and Simulators and Emulators for devices (Android and iOS) this feature transitions really well to any of those programs to simply grab the text on the screen. Anyway i know some of these are narrow uses, but i felt the need to simply point them out as for me it is an oddly unique part of my personal workflow.

Well - lots of disappointments in version 3! On 14 November 2014 I was promised a 20% discount on the app store. Purchased and got charged full price! Sheesh! Don’t count on this app to save PDFs with both the image and the text layer — the text layer isn’t subsequently searchable in Adobe Acrobat! On the upside -— the OCR is better than Adobe Acrobat XI on the Mac and it is MUCH easier to edit the resulting text than in Acrobat. But if the app can’t produce a standard PDF isn’t pretty much niche stuff. Lots of work to do guys. Can I get my money back?

I am disappointed. I am not interested in upgrading to 10.10 just to use ver 3.0. Shame you have chosen to abandoned 2.x users who still need important improvements and are using 10.7 still. You are as greedy and controlling as Apple.

Constantly crashing after a scan as Prizmo tries to perform OCR. And there’s no way to tell the app that I don’t need OCR in the first place.

Tried this application in demo mode. Very nice UI and it's very logical and easy to understand. Would be better if it would OCR in multiple languages at once instead of selecting one at a time since some documents have mixed languages. Accuracy was not very good at all either with black on white background or colored text on picture background. To be fair, it was better with black on white, but even then, not terribly accurate, at least not enough to be able to consider it for purchase. Then there is the issue of crashing. After trying to close my first test, I got an infinite beach ball and had to force quit. Subsequently, it took several tries to close the document without the app hanging. I tried a second test and the app hung again and I had to force quit twice, so it was not stable at all for me on Mavericks. I wish they could improve stability, add multiple language recognition at the same time and greatly improve accuracy (which is what OCR is all about) as they do have a very nice GUI which is superior to most other, even more expensive OCR apps.

I'm rating this app low because so far it has not worked! It won't open a PDF, a jpg or anything I've tried. It has unexpectedly quit twice, so to this point I'm at a loss as to what is going on with this app, but if it don't work I want a refund!

I was very critical to this program due to so many crap Applications we have been bombarded with lately in Mac. Was especially peeved at the price for a pro version. I ended up getting Prizmo anyway as part of a MacUpdate Bundle and thought i'd give it a try. I am here to report to anyone considering this program that it is Amazing, it truly is a gem buried under heaps of Mac app garbage and it is worth every penny. Saved me tons of work on one project alone! The ease of use and great user interface is fantastic. So I want to give credit where credit is due, especially since I slammed it on a previous sale on price, without even trying it first. It is definitely a must have!

I cannot persuade the demo to open a PDF file. Acrobat, Preview, and PDFpen will open it, and 2 out of the 3 will OCR it. Is the demo crippled, so that it won't open PDF files? Drag/drop do not work. Nor does opening from the menus - pdf files are grayed out. The web site claims this software will process PDF files.

I can't get any output from the TEXT setting (I'm talking about the scanner kind options Text/BW/Colour, not the Prizmo option) I've tried with both Text and Image options in Prizmo. The scanner operates , but there is no output the Prizmo document. Scanning my document in B&W works fine.

Today I tried to open Prizmo and I got a message which said Prizmo is corrupted move to trash now, which I did.

Although Prizmo has a lot of potential, I think it needs some improvements, especially on the import/export part. I had a scanned multipage PDF I wanted OCR'ed with Prizmo. No can do. Convert to multi-page TIFF then? Nope. Only option: create 37 seperate JPG's. Not an option. Using it as a scan-only tool with some nice features also appears not to be possible. OCR is mandatory, no export as a JPG or PDF. I think this are 2 tiny features which would make this app extremely more versatile. Also the workflow might be a bit more intuitive. Looking forward to future versions!

Very nicely implemented OCR application with great support for ImageKit (Image Capture-compatible) scanners. Much cleaner UI than ReadIRIS (although to be fair that app is better than it was in the new version 14). Prizmo has definitely become my go-to OCR application. My only minor gripe is that there seems to be no ability to export to Word format. You have to use RTF which is not a terrible alternative, but not quite as convenient as exporting directly to .doc or .docx.

Are there any plans to add support for Japanese in a future release of Prizmo? The Mac version of FineReader doesn’t seem to support it, while the Mac version of Readiris does support it but doesn’t exactly have glowing reviews, so I’m hoping that Prizmo can fill the gap for Mac users needing Japanese OCR software.

Any plans on adding modern Greek support?

Did you plan to support Chinese, I'm looking all over. Still it look like a very promising piece of App, esp it is in the bundle now, will buy for sure.

What is the license for the non-App store version? How many computers can you install it on?

$618 is incorrect, their website lists it at $49, or $99 for the automator actions/batch processing. This is a deceptive way to get attention for mupromo, which otherwise is a great deal. List the correct prices.

Does Prizmo support classical Greek & Latin? If not, any plans to include them? thnx

How does this compare to VueScan?

So I was about to jump on this thinking $30 for scanning software is extremely high but I could use this, and $50 Is just crazy. Then I saw that they have a pro pack for $100! So basically this is not a complete program till you opt for the $100 FOR A SCANNING PROGRAM! $100!!!. You know what costs $100 and probably worth it? Adobe Lightroom 4. You see the deference in value for programs here? Please don't even bother teling me how it's more then just a scanning software, or that I most people dont need the complete version. You can also buy 3 canon printer/scanners for $100 right now on amazon, and that's hardware, shipped from another country with packaging and designing and manuals and ink and, and, and etc!! So I dont, want to hear the argument about how your programers need to get paid for their work. All the mac app developers need to take a chill pill and calm down a bit because this pricing is getting out of hand and quite frankly not nearly worth the cost. Not to mention that every time apple sneezes un update, all the apps want you to upgrade at a cost. I realize that recent fanboy and popularity of apple lately, but have a realistic outlook because I have a feeling that you will all go down like the dot com boom. What do you think makes more money? If you sell 1 complete edition at $100 you would most likely sell 50 at $20 or even more. This has been proven over and over again, basic economics. Needless to say I will not buy this program, because you are too greedy. Anyway had my say good luck with all that.

with Prizmo 1.x I was able to open a jpg, make corrections and save back as jpg. but with Prizmo 2, without the otpional (50$) Pro-Pack you can only save to a proprietary format? =:-0 if so... it's a downgrade!

I won't write a review because I don't own the license for the software. I am evaluating only on the trial version: I own the iPhone version too and it works fine with good results. Particularly the TTS voices are useful. However, Prozmo on iPhone is not the best - I find FotoNote provider better results for quality of recognition. Anyways, this comment is about the Mac version. It has useful things like curvature correction which the Abby doesn't have. But I don't see batch conversion anywhere. So while it can import pics directly from the phone, there is no option to do batch OCR. Also can't import multiple pics at once. The recognition works fine, although I would expect the tool to be more self-reliant and automated / intelligent. While Prizmo is definitely better than "OCR Kit" it's by far not as good as Abby Finereader Express. Abby, even though old software from 2010 works still better. I tried running a few difficult to recognize pictures from camera through Prizmo and Abby. Abby picked up twice as much words. Both were very inaccurate because the picture was very hard to recognize, but still Abby picked much more words. Based on my test I would recommend Abby over Prizmo.

Not impressed. I am using the demo version and there is a lot of hanging. Cannot undo selections for OCR scanning, which is the only part of this app I am interested in. Then when I finally got something to save as text Prizmo informed me I could not save it as text unless I bought the product! Well I am not shelling out $49.95 just to find out whether Prizmo's OCR works well enough.

Just curious, why is the Mac app $49.95 and the iOS app only $9.99? What features are missing from the iOS version? Thanks.

I really like the idea of working with camera pictures. I can take picture of almost anything, and then process it within Prizmo. And by the way, it also works with my flatbed scanner.

Bought this over 1 month ago - on the promise that it works with !0.5.8 on my 2009 Macbook Pro - yes it did seem to work for a few times but as soon as I check what's been actually saved - they all comes out jumbled and pretty much useless and I am not talking about the OCR, I am referring to the actual image being acquired. Emailed the author for help - not much use except an advice that I should upgrade to 10.6 instead. The concept is good but the software is buggy as hell - with the price, get yourself a scanner instead.

Version 1.5 locked up my computer on three separate occasions, and when it did perform the image adjustments I applied to my images it took forever. Complete joke of an application. Steer well clear!

I got this a few months ago via a MacZot promotion...initially, I didn't have a lot of luck with the OCR and sort of gave up on it, which was a shame as I really need a good OCR package. Fired it up again today and downloaded the 1.5 update and it's like a completely different app - the OCR works brilliantly on direct scans as well as on images from a digital camera - I've not checked tethering as yet, but direct imports from the card are a really useful feature. I've tried throwing all sorts of poor quality scans, wonky images and mixes of text and graphics at it and the hit rate is really impressive. I'm not sure what's been done under the bonnet to give this improvement, but I can now wholeheartedly recommend Prizmo...

It's the time of year where I need to record examples of my student's work for my records. I take lots of pictures of large format work while it's pinned up for presentation. Later comes the tedious task of processing it in Photoshop: removing any perspective distortion, lens distortion, image rotation and uneven lighting. This time around I'm giving my newly licensed copy of Prizmo a workout to do this. Here is what I've found: Prizmo makes short work of removing perspective and lens distortion. I can get through a lot more images in a lot less time, which I'm pretty happy with. This means I can compile more examples of work to show to next year's students as well as build up our file of exemplars for exhibition and web display purposes. Excellent. I've also discovered a significant bug in the software. The first step after importing an image is to click the four corners of the region you want cropped and straightened. Prizmo excels at this operation but for one occasional crucial bug: the processed image sometimes has it's left and bottom edges cut off. At other times it's one of the other corners. This means I must manually adjust three of the four corners to compensate, introducing much trial and error and reducing the effectiveness of the radial distortion controls. When it behaves like this it's frustrating and makes Prizmo a one-trick Pony that doesn't do its trick very well-and it's a fairly expensive pony at that. When it works as it should it's a dream. There are a few rough edges in the software that really should have been caught before release. The most embarrassing one is in the “image” slip that allows adjustment of brightness and contrast, etc.. There are three checkboxes, “Binarize”, “Invert” and “Homogenize”. Hover the mouse over any of them reveals a “tool tip” stating: “Convert the image to black and white (dual tone without gray shades), potentially increasing outline accuracy” It seems to me that this is a simple duplication of the tip for “Binarize”. There is no unique tip for Invert, which doesn't need one, and Homogenize, which desperately does. The manual states that homogenize is there to “smooth the output image luminosity”, which is a great feature for smoothing out uneven illumination on the original image though in practice it's a bit fiddly to get right. You need to play with the brightness and contract sliders to get a reasonable image with Homogenize activated. It also seems to make the image quite noisy. On the topic of sliders they aren't large, which means you can see your image while working with them, but that makes them difficult to use accurately. Prizmo should take a tip from applications like Apple's Apeture (but not iPhoto) that allow multiple interactions with sliders: clicking and dragging on the slider for gross adjustment, clicking on arrows for fine adjustment, and direct display and editing of numerical values. Once you have the values the way you want them Prizmo will let you save them as a preset, which is very useful. Image sizing and proportions can be quite hit and miss. Prizmo does a great job of guessing proportions most of the time and toggling the state of the “Automatic Sizing” checkbox seems to do the job. There are some custom size presets that are potentially very useful however the metric paper size presets, A5, A4 and A3, and perhaps the others for that matter (I never use them), clearly expect the image to be a portrait format document. Using them distorts any landscape images into portrait formats. There is not way of saving size presets so I can't even manually enter the sizes for portrait A4, A3 and A2 the way I'd like to. This is something that needs fixing. When you're working on a whole batch of images Prizmo lacks an obvious way of working on a new image. The easiest way is to just drag and drop one onto the work area using Finder but this inherits the settings from the previous image. Using the File > Open Image… command produces the same result. There is no large dropzone like the one you get when you first launch the application. Finally, when working on an image you'll probably want to see the preview larger to check your progress. There's a small disclosure triangle in the bottom left that does this but you can't zoom in on the preview and it doesn't fill the window. Inexplicably the preview corners are rounded although not the exported image thankfully. It would be useful to be able to view a larger preview image side-by-side with the original while you're working. Overall I'm glad I bought a license for Prizmo. I did this despite knowing that it's not quite complete and is quite overpriced compared to most Mac software because I'd like to see it improve and the developers have already shown themselves to be responsive. I'll be watching this space.

Save as text is disabled in demo. How to know if the program works? No offense but the demo is useless.

I was excited to see this application and keen to try it out. Periodically I need to record drawings and images larger than my scanner and this promises to make short work of tidying up the camera images. It seems to do a good job of of taking distorted images and producing clear, straight outputs. However it's clear that Prizmo is still developing and it has many rough edges and opportunities for improvement: - The zoom view slider appears below the output image but affects the viewing size of the original image. Why not position it below the image it controls just like iPhoto? - Adjusting the output image proportions is very hit-and-miss. There are no visual indicator of proportion or ratio while you're dragging other than guesswork. It would be very useful to have a visual indicator of ratio while dragging, perhaps showing when common ratios are established, such as square, golden rectangle, metric paper sizes (eg. A4), letter size, etc.. user definable ratios would be even better. The Page Options Pane suggest some control over output proportion is possible but seems buggy, sometimes generating width and height values such as “5.018e+04” - The grid placed over the original image is useful but the blue outer border is too bold and obscures the edges of the object you're trying to frame. This makes it difficult to achieve accuracy with out a lot of trial and error. Perimeter grid lines should be adjustable in thickness or possible to replace with corner or trim lines only to facilitate precision. You can adjust the colour of the grid lines but not transparency so that's of little help. - The Image Processing Pane allows some control over the exposure values in the photograph which is good. In ideal situations you'll be able to use the resulting image without modification. Unfortunately it lacks a white point control, meaning more trial and error adjustment is necessary. Also many images are taken in less than even lighting circumstances. It would be good to be able to adjust levels across the image over a gradient, defined by the user. This would help eliminate dark corners or edges and avoid hot spots. Without this control it's necessary to process the image again in Photoshop-which raises the question, “why not use Photoshop for the whole process?” - Sometimes saved output is just a blank document for no apparent reason. In summary, Prizmo is very promising but also unfinished and costly for its features. At US$10 I'd buy it as is and make do with it's rough edges and idiosyncrasies but at US$40 I'll just have to wait to see if it gets a lot smoother and more powerful before I jump in. I wish the developer well and await developments with some anticipation.