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velocraptor.com
VelOCRaptor... Optical Character Recognition (OCR) converts printed type into text. Until now OCR programs have been too expensive and too complicated for occasional use. VelOCRaptor makes OCR available to all Mac users - offering drag-and-drop simplicity at an introductory price of just $29.
VelOCRaptor uses the Google-sponsored OCRopus OCR engine. On good quality documents its accuracy rivals the best in the business. It is work in progress though - with poor quality scans and odd fonts it can still struggle. We're so excited by its potential, and so unimpressed by the price
VelOCRaptor uses the Google-sponsored OCRopus OCR engine. On good quality documents its accuracy rivals the best in the business. It is work in progress though - with poor quality scans and odd fonts it can still struggle. We're so excited by its potential, and so unimpressed by the price
What's New
Version 1.2:
- Adds the ability to disable running the Mac spell-checker. If you are running on text that isn't in the same language as your Mac, or is mainly numbers and letter patterns, it should improve the output.
Requirements
Intel/PPC, Mac OS X 10.5 or later
Intel/PPC, Mac OS X 10.5 or later
| Downloads:5,825 |
| Version Downloads:3,974 |
| Type:Business : Applications |
| License:Shareware |
| Date:12 Feb 2010 |
| Platform:PPC 32 / Intel 32 / OS X |
| Price: $29.00 |
Overall (Version 1.x):  |
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VelOCRaptor... Optical Character Recognition (OCR) converts printed type into text. Until now OCR programs have been too expensive and too complicated for occasional use. VelOCRaptor makes OCR available to all Mac users - offering drag-and-drop simplicity at an introductory price of just $29.
VelOCRaptor uses the Google-sponsored OCRopus OCR engine. On good quality documents its accuracy rivals the best in the business. It is work in progress though - with poor quality scans and odd fonts it can still struggle. We're so excited by its potential, and so unimpressed by the price and usability of other Mac OCR programs, that we've decided to make VelOCRaptor available now. For many uses, in particular locating scanned documents and copying small amounts of text, the accuracy is good enough. For verbatim transcriptions of complicated documents, we may not do so well yet. This will improve as the OCRopus engine improves, and we are committed to releasing updated versions of VelOCRaptor as the accuracy gets better. In the meantime, you can try before you buy, so what have you to lose?
VelOCRaptor uses the Google-sponsored OCRopus OCR engine. On good quality documents its accuracy rivals the best in the business. It is work in progress though - with poor quality scans and odd fonts it can still struggle. We're so excited by its potential, and so unimpressed by the price and usability of other Mac OCR programs, that we've decided to make VelOCRaptor available now. For many uses, in particular locating scanned documents and copying small amounts of text, the accuracy is good enough. For verbatim transcriptions of complicated documents, we may not do so well yet. This will improve as the OCRopus engine improves, and we are committed to releasing updated versions of VelOCRaptor as the accuracy gets better. In the meantime, you can try before you buy, so what have you to lose?
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Marilou53 reviewed on 16 Jan 2013
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IloveBurma reviewed on 12 Jan 2012
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This tool looks very promising as it has an Automator action that will allow me to use it in my workflow.
It's definitely worth the money for that alone.
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- The ability to identify OCR errors and correct them within VelOCRaptor.
- The ability to save as a text file. Currently, VelOCRaptor saves in PDF format only.
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Spinup reviewed on 17 Nov 2009
Would be nice if it had some simple editing tools to fix suspected bad OCR reads, and to automatically straighten rotated images.
Bottom line -- if you need a simple tool to quickly get high quality scanned images into editable text, this app will save you some time.
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BTW: The hard drive is awesome.
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I wish you well but frankly I think you are dancing on dangerous ground here.
Copyright Notice: "Dancing on Dangerous Ground" is a copyrighted title of a dance show created by Jean Butler and is used only to describe a frame of mind or concept. It is not intended to refer or connect with the show that is titled with the same name or the DVD produced and available for sale under this name.
It is so easy to get into trouble these days, even with the mention of a casual expression.
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You're certainly right that large corporations have often sued people without legitimate grounds. That doesn't mean it always happens. Here, not only is the product name in a different market, it isn't even the same name. Also, the word "velociraptor" is not unique to Western Digital, but is rather a name for a dinosaur made popular in the movie "Jurassic Park." You'll notice that the owners of the movie "Jurassic Park" have not sued Western Digital.
So, while I understand that some random corporation may frivolously send threatening letters to people who have not infringed in any way upon their intellectual property, it isn't certain. Also, if people going about their lives always took into consideration that someone may sue them for no good reason, no one could ever do anything. What is usually done is an analysis of the likelihood that you have actually infringed upon someone's intellectual property, and then evaluating the likelihood that they will bother to sue you. Here, the likelihood of both seems fairly low.
Also, your "copyright notice" disclaimer seems amazingly unnecessary. People use puns all the time based on names of popular music/movies/etc without having to apologize. Due to the extensive nature of our entertainment media, if one had to publish a disclaimer every time one uttered a phrase that happened to have come from, or been the title of, a movie or song, we would be unable to communicate. I think your closing paragraph is a great example of the craziness that would result if we all were as worried as you seem to propose. There are a few useful concepts in intellectual property law: fair use, de minimis use, and so on. Good thing, or we would have to abolish all intellectual property for our society to survive.
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qualum reviewed on 26 Jun 2009
Harlequin Computer Solutions, the UK-based makers of VelOCRaptor, may not want you to think of their software as lethal, but small, fast and intelligent it certainly is. For reasons I can't explain, there's been a dearth of compelling OCR software on the Mac since OS X came out, so this is a most welcome development.
Operation is as simple and as effective as one expects of good Mac software: take any image file of a scanned page of text, and drop it on the small VelOCRaptor window. It immediately starts to process it, and after several seconds (or up to a minute for larger, more complex documents), it suddenly becomes a second version of the file, with the same filename followed by the words (with text), which looks the same, but where you notice you can now select the text, copy and paste it elsewhere, etc.
I tried it first with a double-sided leaflet, with images and two columns. The initial, “dumb” PDF measured 660KB - the scanned version weighed in at 5.2Mb, but preserved the images and the column structure.
A copy-and-paste of the scanned text into TextEdit revealed an imperfect but usable rendition of the text.
Much better - nearly perfect - fidelity came about when scanning a plain page of text.
At $29 US, is it worth the money for a licence? It's your call, of course, but I'm on board.
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Birdy53 rated on 12 Aug 2011