A very common request that I get here at DocumentSnap is to compare the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) capabilities of ABBYY FineReader with Adobe Acrobat. Why? Well, for starters, both of them come included with models the Fujitsu ScanSnap as well as other scanners.

1. Download Pdf Reader Pro For Mac
2. Fine Reader Pro For Mac
3. Free Adobe Reader Pro For Mac

I decided to do a quick test comparing the OCR of the two packages using the following criteria:

Abbyy FineReader Pro is an accurate optical character recognition (OCR ) software, it lets you convert scanned documents into editable text. Abby Fine Reader can convert scanned documents to. The word Finereader is justified in the name ABBYY Finereader Pro. I have never come across any other Optical recognition software so accurate. Just like I started my article, I would like to conclude it: ABBYY Finereader is every cent you spent. I just bought an Epson Artisan 837, and I have Mountain Lion. I shot an email off to ABBYY tech support and was sent an FTP link to download a Mountain Lion compatible version of FineReader Sprint 8.0.

• OCR Speed
• Resulting File Size
• Accuracy

The Hardware

For a scanner I used my ScanSnap S1300.

I used two computers for the test:

• Windows: A new cheap Acer laptop with a Core i3 2.40 GHz processor and 4 GB RAM running Windows 7
• Mac: An old 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro with 4 GB RAM running Mac OS X Snow Leopard

The Software

Here are the packages I used:

• Windows: ABBYY FineReader For ScanSnap 4.1 (called from ScanSnap Manager) vs. Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro
• Mac: ABBYY FineReader For ScanSnap 4.1 (run standalone) vs. Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro

Yes, I realize that Adobe Acrobat X is out, but since I am not aware of any scanners that come bundled with it yet, I decided to stick with the versions that ship with the ScanSnap. I’ll update Acrobat X in a later post.

The Document

I scanned a magazine article for this test. It probably would have been better to do this with a bunch of different documents to compare, but hey.

In all cases except one, I scanned without OCR so that I could run it standalone later. Here’s some info on the document that I used:

• Pages: 2
• Scan Quality: 300dpi, Color
• Resulting File Size: 1.5 MB
• Columns: 2, with some images

Maybe I am blind, but I couldn’t figure out a way to run ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap on Windows standalone. If you know how, please leave a message in the comments. In that test, I re-scanned with “Create Searchable PDF” checked in the ScanSnap Manager settings.

The Settings

I tried not to do too many fancy settings to keep things as “real-life” as possible. There were essentially three configurations:

ABBYY FineReader

I set Save Mode to “Text under page image” and Quality to High. These were the settings for the Mac ABBYY, and I believe it is what ScanSnap Manager on Windows uses as well.

Adobe Acrobat (Normal)

I set the output style to “Searchable Image (Exact)” because leaving it just as Searchable Image in my experience has caused some weird things to happen with the resulting PDF. I used these settings on both Windows and Mac.

Adobe Acrobat (With ClearScan)

In Acrobat 9 there is a setting called ClearScan. I used that as an additional test to see what the difference is.

Speed

Windows

• ABBYY Windows: 20.5 seconds
• Acrobat 9: 13.9 seconds
• Acrobat 9 With Clearscan: 17.6 seconds

Mac

• ABBYY Mac: 44.7 seconds
• Acrobat 8: 20.2 seconds

Winner: Acrobat!

Download Pdf Reader Pro For Mac

Since they are different machines, you can’t directly compare the Windows and Mac times, but clearly in both cases Acrobat is faster.

File Size

The non-OCR’ed PDF was 1.5 MB.

Windows

• ABBYY Windows: 1.7 MB (+.2 MB)
• Acrobat 9: 1.5 MB (same)
• Acrobat 9 With ClearScan: 315 KB (-1.16 MB)

Mac

• ABBYY Mac: 1.4 MB (-.1 MB)
• Acrobat 8: 1.5 MB (same)

Winner: Acrobat 9 with ClearScan!

With an astonishing 1.16 MB reduction in file size after OCR, Acrobat 9 with ClearScan is the winner. Wow.

Accuracy

Here is a passage from the article:

Let’s see how each of the packages did:

ABBYY Windows

The spreadsheet has become the virtual “slide rule” for CMAs. It’s used for everything from preliminary strategic plans to financial statements. As with any familiar method, it finds its way into numerous situations where better alternatives are available, mostsignificantly in itswidespread use as a de facto reporting tool.
The appeal of the spreadsheet as the quickest way to get a report out is not hard to appreciate. “Excel is probably the most comfortable environment for a lot of financial professionals,” Alok Ajmera, vice-president, professional services withMississauga, Ont.-basedProphixSoftware, says. “There’s a very little learning curve, you can effectively do whatever you want with the data, and it works fairly well in smaller organizations.”
Periodic and complex reporting in processes like revenue management or cost management, however, is where the spreadsheet model really starts to break down.

Acrobat 9 Windows

T he spreadsheet has become the virtual “slide rule” for CMAs. It’s used for everything from preliminary su·ategic plans to financial statements. As with any farniliar method, it finds its way into numerous situations where better alternatives are available, most significantly in its widespread use as a de facto reporting tool.
The appeal of tlle spreadsheet as the quickest way to get a report out is not hard to appreciate. “Excel is probably tlle most comfortable environment for a lot of financial professionals,” AJok Ajmera, vice-president, professional services with Mississauga, Ont.-based Prophix Software, says. “There’s a very little learning curve, you can effectively do whatever you want witll tlle data, and it works fairly well in smaller organizations.”
Periodic and complex reporting in processes like revenue management or cost management, however, is where the spreadsheet model really starts to break down.

Acrobat 9 With ClearScan

The spreadsheet has become the virtual “slide rule” for CMAs. It’s used for everything from preliminary su·ategic plans to financial statements. As with any farniliar method, it finds its way into numerous situations where better alternatives are available, most significantly in its widespread use as a de facto reporting tool.
The appeal of tlle spreadsheet as the quickest way to get a report out is not hard to appreciate. “Excel is probably tlle most comfortable environment for a lot of financial professionals,” AJok Ajmera, vice-president, professional services with Mississauga, Ont.-based Prophix Software, says. “There’s a very little learning curve, you can effectively do whatever you want witll tlle data, and it works fairly well in smaller organizations.”
Periodic and complex reporting in processes like revenue management or cost management, however, is where the spreadsheet model really starts to break down.

ABBYY Mac

The spreadsheet has become the virtual “slide rule” for CiMAs. It’s used for everything from preliminary strategic plans to financial statements. As with any familiar method, it finds its way into numerous situations where better alternatives are available, most significantly in its widespread use as a de facto reporting tool.
The appeal of die spreadsheet as the quickest way to get a report out is not hard to appreciate. “Excel is probably the most comfortable environment for a lot of financial professionals,” Alok Ajmera, vice-president, professional sendees with Mississauga, Ont.-based Prophix Software, says. “There’s a very little learning curve, you can effectively do whatever you want with the data, and it works fairly well in smaller organizations.”
Periodic and complex reporting in processes like revenue management or cost management, however, is where the spreadsheet model really starts to break down.

Acrobat 8 Mac

T he spreadsheet has become the virtual “slide rule” for CMAs. It’s used for everything frorn preliminary strategic plans to financial statements. Aswith any familiar method, it finds its way into numerous situations where better alterna tives are available, most significantly in its widespread use as a de facto reporting tool.
T he appeal of the spreadsheet as the quickest
way to get a report out is not hard to appreciate.
“Excel is probably the most comfortable
environment for a lot of financial professionals,” avaJlaun:.:,JIIU:::’l;)It;IIIULauuy1111l::>WIUC::>PU:C1U uocd::>
a de facto reporting tool. T he appeal of the spreadsheet as the quickest
way to get a report out is not hard to appreciate. “Excel is probably me most comfortable environment for a lot of financial professionals,” AJok Ajmera, vice-president, professional services with Mississauga, Ont.-based Prophix Software, says. “T here’s a very little learning curve, you can effectively do whatever you want with the data, and it works fairly well in smaller organiza tions.”
Periodic and complex reporting in processes like revenue management or cost management, however, is where the spreadsheet model really starts to break down.

Winner: ABBYY FineReader for Mac looks the best to me. Acrobat 8 on the Mac is pretty terrible (in this example anyways).

Conclusion

Is there a “best” choice? It seems that in this example anyways, Adobe Acrobat 9 with ClearScan turned on gives fast results with good OCR while dramatically reducing the file size.

If you don’t really care about speed so much, FineReader produces good OCR results and for ScanSnap users, has the additional benefit of being integrated with ScanSnap Manager.

As with most things, the best software is the one that works the best for you. Have you found similar results? Any other tests of your own to share? Leave a note in the comments.

(Photo by Polina Sergeeva)

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Fine Reader Pro For Mac

• Pros

  Highest-quality OCR on the market. Exceptionally clear interface. Exports to multiple formats. Useful cross-format document-comparison feature.

• Cons

  Lacks Acrobat's full-text-indexing feature. Some features only in the more-expensive Corporate edition.

• Bottom Line

  FineReader 14 maintains this app's status as the best all-round OCR app on the planet. A fully redesigned interface and background-recognition features make it faster and easier to use than the superb previous versions.

For years now, our undisputed Editor's Choice for the best-in-class optical character reading software has been ABBYY FineReader. The revamped latest version, ABBYY FineReader 14, is a top-notch OCR app that adds document-comparison features that you can't find anywhere else and new PDF-editing features that rival the advanced feature set in Adobe Acrobat DC. FineReader 14 is also the best document-comparison productivity app I've ever seen, with the ability to compare documents in two different formats, so you can compare a Word file to a PDF version of the same file and see which of the two has the latest revisions. It's truly terrific.

• $499.99
• $49.95
• $2.99
• $499.99
• $6.99

What You'll Pay

In my writing and editing work, I've relied on ABBYY FineReader for as long as I can remember, and one reason I work mostly in Windows and not on a Mac is that ABBYY FineReader Pro for Mac version is a lot less powerful than ABBYY FineReader 14 for Windows. For this review, I tested the $399.99 ABBYY FineReader 14 Corporate edition. A $199.99 (upgrade price $129.99) Standard version has all the OCR and PDF-editing features of Corporate, but lacks the document-compare component and doesn't include the Hot Folder feature that automatically creates PDF files from documents or images saved to the folder.

For most users, the Standard version will be more than enough, but the document-comparison feature alone may be worth the extra price for the Corporate app. The prices, by the way, are perpetual, with no annoying subscription model like Adobe's required.

Feature Set

You'll typically use an OCR app to convert scanned images of printed text into either an editable Word document or a searchable PDF file. Now that every smartphone takes high-resolution photos, you don't even need a scanner to create images that you can turn into editable documents or PDFs, but your OCR software needs to be able to work with skewed and otherwise irregular photos in addition to high-quality scans. FineReader has always excelled at cleaning up imperfect images, but version 14 seems even more impressive than earlier versions. When I used my phone to take photos of two-page spreads in a book, FineReader effortlessly split the photos into single-page images, unskewed the images so that text lines are horizontal, and recognized the text with often perfect accuracy.

FineReader hides its myriad advanced features behind straightforward beginner-level menus, but the advanced options are easily accessible to advanced users from a toolbar and menu. When you start up the app, it displays a spacious menu listing a half-dozen tasks: viewing and editing an existing PDF file; performing advanced OCR tasks in a PDF file; and converting standard document formats to PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or electronic publication formats, such as ePub and DjVu. Conversion options include the ability to combine multiple files into a single PDF, Word, or Excel file. A second menu lists options to scan to FineReader's OCR Editor or directly to PDF, Word, Excel, or to various other image, document, and publishing formats. A third menu opens FineReader's separate compare-documents app. This menu system is more than enough to achieve most standard OCR and file-conversion tasks, and the Windows 10–style interface is among the clearest I've seen.

Editing Muscle

For basic PDF editing, FineReader has a clearer and more modern interface than Adobe Acrobat, and makes it easier to perform tasks like using a developer certificate to sign a document. FineReader's search feature has conveniences that Adobe doesn't match, such as the ability to highlight or underline all instances of a search string. You can also switch on a convenient redaction mode that lets you blank out any text or region in a document simply by selecting a region with a mouse, clicking, and moving on to the next.

On the other hand, ABBYY doesn't include Acrobat's full-text indexing feature that can make searching almost instantaneous in large documents. FineReader's interface uses the familiar sidebar of thumbnails or bookmarks at the left of a full-size image, but the layout is exceptionally clear, and all icons are labeled. A new background OCR feature means that you can get started editing a PDF before the app has completed its text-recognition operations.

FineReader's unique powers are most evident in its OCR editor, an efficient tool for checking its OCR output and correcting recognition errors. Scanned images of old books, crumpled paper, or marked-up pages are almost certain to produce either outright errors, or readings where the OCR software can't be certain of the original text and makes a best guess of what was on the page. FineReader's OCR editor works like a high-powered spelling checker in a word-processor, quickly trawling through doubtful OCR readings while you confirm or correct each one in turn—and its superb keyboard interface lets you confirm a doubtful reading with one keystroke or correct it with two or three keystrokes, typically selecting the right reading from a list that the program offers. This kind of repetitive work normally strains your hand muscles as you maneuver the mouse, but FineReader's thoughtful design reduces strain to an absolute minimum. One other plus, for many law and government offices that still use WordPerfect for creating documents, FineReader can export OCR output directly to WordPerfect without making you save first in an intermediate format like RTF.

Everything in FineReader seems designed to reduce needless operations. When you install it, it adds a Screenshot Reader app to your taskbar icons. This works like a superpowered version of Windows' built-in Snipping Tool. I use it to capture the text when an on-screen image shows a picture of some text but doesn't let me select the text itself—for example, an image of a page in Google Books or Amazon's Look Inside feature. I start up the Screenshot Reader app, drag the mouse to frame the text I want to capture, and then wait a second or two while FineReader performs OCR on the image and sends the text to the Clipboard. Options in the app let me select a table or simply capture an image to the Clipboard. They also let me send the output directly to Microsoft Word or some other app instead of to the Clipboard. There's nothing else out there that's remotely as powerful and efficient at capturing text from the screen.

The Best OCR

Free Adobe Reader Pro For Mac

For advanced, high-quality, fine-tuned OCR, FineReader essentially has almost no competition. Adobe Acrobat DC is a PDF-editing powerhouse, with strong OCR features built-in, but it isn't as accurate as FineReader and doesn't offer anything like FineReader's interactive OCR editor.

OmniPage and the enterprise-level OmniPage Professional offer high-powered, automated OCR functions that work well for high-volume operations, but, at least in my limited testing, OmniPage doesn't match FineReader in accuracy or in its OCR-editing interface. The lower-tech ReadIris Pro, bundled with many scanners, doesn't match any of these three in convenience or accuracy. Acrobat, OmniPage, and FineReader leave all other OCR software in the dust. But FineReader, our Editors' Choice, is the only one of the three that you'll want if you need the ultimate in accuracy, convenience, and control.

ABBYY FineReader

Bottom Line: FineReader 14 maintains this app's status as the best all-round OCR app on the planet. A fully redesigned interface and background-recognition features make it faster and easier to use than the superb previous versions.

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