I'm looking for a relatively simple way to scan multipage documents and perform OCR on them, using my Mac. I know this can be done with my iPhone but I've never gotten the hang of reliably being able to consistently get a good shot of the page and I have no interest in putting a lot of effort into it when I've got a decent flat bed scanner and a good Mac right here. I don't need to deal with large documents, generally no more than 3 or 4 pages, but I need accurate OCR and the ability to copy and paste the text elsewhere.
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Fine Reader
Actually, I'm using Fine Reader for this, however they haven't update the app for nearly two years and it's intel based. So I'm also searching for a good alternative as I mostly use this app for scanning my physical books and exporting them as word and pdf.
OCR options for Mac, phone stand.
Well, let's see. There's Fine Reader, already mentioned. OneStep Reader, which used to be KNFB Reader. I've used it on Windows. It's OK, but the interface was a little clunky, IMO. Also kind of expensive. Prismo, assuming it's been updated. People really seem to like DocuScan Plus.
https://pneumasolutions.com/docuscan/
It's even more expensive than OneStep Reader and it does everything online, so far as I can tell. Please note I haven't tried any of these, I asked a similar question a while back and these are the answers I got.
If you're scanning fixed things, i.e. you're not out at a restaurant trying to scan a menu with your phone, you can get various stands for your phone, some of which are designed for the blind. That way once you get whatever lined up, or set it up so you put your phone on it and it lines up, you have it in place. I haven't tried one of these either, but it might be a solution worth looking into.
OCR only?
if you just want to do the ocr job on the files you have scanned, not some software works with your scanner, then the apple visual framework has excellent ocr capability. it is multilingual, and it recognizes handwriting too. just use a simple swift script to call it.
I need a scanner.
I don't know if OP wants this, but personally, I need something that scans, somehow. That's why I'm looking into phone stands and possibly just using something on the phone, because otherwise, I'd probably use the phone as a camera for the Mac. But I'll be scanning books. So it needs to be dedicated scanning and OCR software, most likely.
I do see that Preview will supposedly recognize PDF files of images? How do you get that to happen? I've opened some and just get "contains image" for each page, no OCR.
Re: OCR Solution
I have a flatpad scanner, so I need an application for using that.
Buy the way, What is apple visual framework and how can we make OCR with it?