PDF OCR X for Mac3.0.34

Own both Readiris and Abby fine reader, both cannot process German Fraktur, Abby charges a lot of money extra for a special Fraktur version. This app did a great job and more over the accuracy was above i expected. I used the free version, original document was 600dpi tiff file for each page, so no problem with the free version single page limit. Every page imported, recognized and exported to txt, hardly errors with Fraktur. Software is very straightforward.

NOT freeware, MacUpdate Admins!!!!! The 'demo' is free for a couple of examples only.

I use it from last 1 month it give me best result. There are many free ocr software availabe in market but i think its better. i find it reviews from https://www.macoszon.com/ocr-software-for-mac/ you can also check others.

Restricting the free version to edit only one page of the document makes this application useless for me.

Not very often I need OCR. I had 4 docs in small font that I needed to convert. I scanned to pdf, dropped them into the app and they all gave a highly workable text file even in low res. Does what it says and does it well. Why spend money on an app especially if its only used once in a blue moon?

Client sent me a scan of a bio to add to a civic website. Couldn't use my Acrobat Pro (not displaying files). Went looking for a free Mac alternative. Downloaded and opened this. It asked me to tell it what file to ocr. I did. It ocred with no further fuss. Did a very nice job. This will be my OCR app going forward (unless problems rear). Review evaluates simple uses.

I found it's similar to PDF text extraction tool. And I also found such a resource.

I work with the Community Edition but since some Apple system updates the app is not working anymore. I get a message: java: i.o. IO Exception: Operation not permitted. Please advice!!

This app saved my evening. Simple download and I easily installed an extra language with one click. Drag and drop. Worked fast an very accurate (more than 95% of over 1000 words) on a single page scanned PDF with 4 colums and Dutch and Italian Mixed! Tnx. Remember, results depend on your source.

not good, don't download it.

Great app: fast, accurate, plenty of language packs.

This is crap. Try to use a language other than English - making lot of mistakes. I think that probably the majority of free online OCR works better. I chose the first result from Google: www.onlineocr.net - there was not one wrong letter.

Tried it on a very simple document in Spanish. The recognition was so bad, it would be faster to retype it from scratch than make all the corrections.

From the Note in the above description: "The free community edition is limited to PDFs of 1 page or less." Nice one, Dev, nice one. You can't have less than a one-page PDF. It's like trying to get "one DVD or less" into your slot.

PDF OCR X requires the installation of a potentially dangerous, security hole ridden version of Java. I'd steer clear of it if you can and use one of the many alternatives.

It does exactly what it says it does, does it well and without problems. You do need to have a good quality document to start with, but this is the same with all OCR software I have used.

I was in a hurry to get 2 scanned sheets converted to text and PDF OCR X helped me out. Both files were converted in less than 30 secs. Thank you for this awesome program! Easily 5/5!

Although this product was not what I needed at the time, it was very easy to use and understand. The customer service from Steve Hannah from this company was stellar!! I definitely will watch for their products.

it just works.

Also requires Java.

Seems to function about as good as any other OCR program I've used. The output quality is highly dependent on the input quality, which is to be expected. If you have fuzzy characters from a scan, then don't expect miracles, it won't perform too good. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the program will also do OCR on .jpg images of text. Just drop the .jpg onto the icon and it will be automatically converted into a pdf before the OCR operation. Obviously, the program has limitations, but you'd be hard pressed to beat FREE.

I know there's a free version but I didn't find it worked consistently. Simple things are not there. It should know itself to rotate the page if it need to. It should auto colour-correct (b/c), and some very clear text documents it simply failed to turn them into searchable pdf's at all which is worrying.

I whined earlier about this only being free for one page. But it does a great job on one page. I ended up with a number of single page jpg's of text I wanted to scan. It was spot-on. I'd have to say it is well worth it to buy - but they provide it free for one page files. They should have a time or run limit on this, as it is quite good.

Hey, for those guys who are complaining about only being able to OCR one page at a time, Readiris is for sale in the Mac App Store. For only $129. Have at it. You can't beat free. free, free. I needed to OCR a page or two and it was all done quite well for a grand total of free. Thank you Web lite solutions Corp.

This should be listed as demo.

I just wanted to raise my stars awarded which I could not do before. Fine software, good support.

I paid for Enterprise v. 1.9.10 and had success with it converting Swedish language documents. I then downloaded 1.9.12 and discovered it's only the Community Edition. There is an Enterprise 1.9.12, but to get it I have to pay for it again. This is an obvious oversight, but it means my app is not usable until someone at WebLite sends me a new key. Quite an inconvenience.

I wish this could handle sheet music.

Nice, it does what it says great... one page PDF's converted to text. Just what I needed rather than retyping seven pages. Can't beat that for free.

I'm very pleased to see that the authors of this software have made it very clear that the free version is distinct from the paid version, and what its limitations are. This is much more Mac-like marketing, and is much fairer to those who want to use the product. Thanks!

I can't believe I wasted my time downloading this "free" software which only extracts the first page of a PDF file - and then doesn't do it very well. Please can someone from Macupdate stop other people wasting their time by changing the category from "Free" to "Demo"? If you want to get at the contents of a PDF, then the free PDF editor extension that Sun released for OpenOffice/StarOffice is much better. And that's free as in "no charge *AND* fully functional".

Many thanks for fixing the bug.

This free "Community Version" only allows one page to be converted.. doesn't write changes back into the PDF to make it searchable, only outputs as plaintext. Compared to commercial Adobe Acrobat OCR this is crap, but at least it's free crap.

Try this: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/16101/file-juicer Extracts everything from any document. I use it to extract images and text from PDFs sent by clients.

Will this convert the images to html document? I'm trying to convert a pdf to chm and need this html intermediate step.

now intel only

DL link bad. Thanks ... Ken

I am a registered user of PDF OCR Enterprise Ed. and this is my question: since you provided to me, after the payment on February 16, 2010, a temporary link for downloading my Enterprise Ed. version 1.4, with no serial number or else, how can I upgrade to version 1.7 or any future version? Thanks,

I would certainly use (an buy) this software if I could choose to include the text back in the pdf file. Then I could keep only one file, searchable and with proper layout. Let me know if you plan to release it.

This is not a Freeware, it is a Demo. The Demo Work only on the first page. The software cost 30$. Please update your database to change from Free to Demo.

I think PDF OCR's most valuable feature is that it extracts text directly from images. This is noted on the developers web site, but you might not guess it from the app's name. In fact, it's more accurate extracting the text directly from images than from the same image in a pdf. As has been noted, overall it is not as accurate as some OCR software, but it does fill a useful niche - quick extraction of text from images or pdfs created from images (either inserted into documents and saved as pdf, or scanned).

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is not totally accurate but it is the only way to extract text from PDFs originated from scanning. For ordinary PDFs, whether single or multi page, use the freeware BatchConvert PDF2Text or ConvertPDFsToText Service (for Snow Leopard only) which are completely accurate.

Somewhat deceptive description of the app... This utility converts only the **first page** (if you are lucky). To get more than just the first page of a document, you need to buy the upgrade. Did not work for me. Prefer PDFpen as it can also be used to modify the document, add in text, etc.

It seems to me: What this app does you can do with Select All -> Copy and then Past it into any Text editor. I don'y know about formatting, but certainly you cannot copy figures this way. Neither does this app. On the other hand, for this money...

This is a mini-review. I tried already a lot of OCR-software and if it was not rather expensive the results were not so good. Today tried PDF OCR 1.7.1 with two text, one in Dutch, one in Brazilian Portuguese. The Dutch text black on a blue background, in a compressed font, the Portuguese text black on white, in a clear font (Helvetica-like). The 'translation' of the Portuguese text was almost perfect, however without any formating. The 'translation' of the Dutch text needed a lot of correction, sometimes because of the original print, mostly because PDF OCR made unnecessary mistakes (the Dutch word u for you, for example, was translated 38 times correctly, but 7 times replaced by f.e. LI, rt or tr. For the Dutch text the reliability was rather poor, for the Portuguese text the result was good.

To answer my own question: This app does not preserve formatting. What you get is a mass of text, disorganized and jumbled. I used the app to convert an operating agreement for an LLC which has clearly delineated sections, subsections, etc, both normal and bold text, etc. and what I got was several pages of solid text which was very hard to read. I suppose that if your only purpose was to extract the words, this app would suffice, but don't think for a moment that the extracted document will have any resemblance to the original in terms of formatting or "readability." I'll stick to Acrobat Pro. I am not a fan of Adobe, but once you learn how to use Acrobat Pro, it becomes a truly amazing and powerful product.

Does exactly what it says.

It is strange I did download it as it said that the platform is PPC/Intel and when I open it it allways say that PDF OCR 1.7 works only for Intel system I wonder what I do wrong gglatendresse@shaw.ca Date: 06 Apr 2010 Platform: PPC/Intel

I agree that ratings of software should in large part be based on the utility of the software in question. In this case, in the description of the software the fact that the "Enterprise" version is not free should be included in the blurb without requiring someone to click on the "More" button. Also, the feature description is incomplete. Most PDFs include formatting, etc. Does this software just generate an unformatted text file without line breaks and with loss of the original formatting?

I don't want to buy into the discussion about free versus paid versions at a vitriolic level, but I would like to suggest that it might be ethical for software developers to name their packages in ways that show potential users what they're getting into. For example, the use of LE to show that a program is a "light" or "limited" version is usually fairly clear to anyone who's been using computers for a while. I must admit, I do feel that this particular sales tactic is less than ideal. It feels a bit like an attempt to hook you on the free version so that you'll feel compelled to pay up for the greater capabilities of the paid one. Yes, it's legal. But it's a bit back-to-front ethically, for me. Why not list the paid version, but say that there's also a free version that only does a single page at a time, for example? When all is said and done, though, as long as people rate the software according to its abilities, and not to the pricing policies of the vendor (which are very much open to comment, but not a rating, I believe), then this place should continue to work just fine.

Using the logic of the complainant below, one could say that Adobe Reader is a crippled version of Adobe Acrobat!

CRIPPLEWARE CRIPPLEWARE CRIPPLEWARE CRIPPLEWARE CRIPPLEWARE CRIPPLEWARE Some developers will tell you anything to get your attention. This is hardly what one could call "free" unless every PDF in the world consists of just one page, because that's all this version will convert. Nice that it is offered without cost to test, but that puts in the realm of DEMOWARE too, doesn't it? So why not just be honest about that?

v1.6 won't quit. Requires force quitting.

Misleading, this is *NOT* FREE, unless you live in a strange alternate reality with only one-page PDFs. Most PDFs in my world are multi-page. It is a one-page DEMO of a commercial product.

FOR ORDINARY PDFs Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is not totally accurate but it is the only way to extract text from PDFs originated from scanning. For ordinary PDFs, whether single or multi page, use the freeware BatchConvert PDF2Text which is completely accurate.

PPC Only per the developer: " Unfortunately the current version only runs on Intel based macs. We are working towards removing some dependencies to make it work on PowerPC, but for now, unfortunately it's Intel only."

Every single page pdf I have tried gets the same results ---- Ôªø with Tex-Edit Plus ---- blank with TextEdit. I did experiment with the small assortment of options with no difference in results. Mac OSX 10.5.8 PPC G4 1.5Ghz, 1.25G ram I have notified the developer

Intro states "1 page or less". I had a PDF of less than one page once. Turns out, it contained none.

FOR MULTIPAGE PDFs ... use the freeware ImagesFromPDF to convert to separate PDF images then use PDF OCR X.

The "License" still says "Free" but this is crippleware.

I agree with Pete-on-the-Web. It's a tad disingenuous to call this "free" software when it appears to be more like a crippled demo. If you use this (which I haven't) and it works (which I'll assume, looking on the bright side), how long is it going to be before most users find the need to go beyond a single page?

This version only works with one page PDF's. How many one page PDF's are there out there? Costs $30 otherwise. Something should be mentioned about that fact in the notes. Couldn't use it as all the PDF's I have are multi-page.