OmniPage Pro for Macintosh Users Manual CAERE CORPORATION 100 Cooper Court 95032-3321 USA Los Gatos, California &DHUH *PE+ ,QQHUH :LHQHU 5JH=IIA 0QFKHQ *HUPDQ\ &DHUH 8. ,QIRUPDWLRQ &HQWUH $EEH\ +RXVH $EEH\ 2UFKDUG 6WUHHW :HVWPLQVWHU /RQGRQ 6:3 -- &HQWUH G©LQIRUPDWLRQV &DHUH UXH GHV $UFKLYHV 3DULV )UDQFH Please Note To use this program, you should know how to work in the Macintosh environment. Please refer to your Macintosh documentation if you have questions about how to use menus, dialog boxes, or scroll bars. OmniPage Pro for Macintosh Version 8 800-1267-030 Copyright© 1998 Caere Corporation All rights reserved. Caere, OmniPage, OmniPage Pro, AnyPage, True Page, Language Analyst, and 3D OCR are registered trademarks of Caere Corporation. AnyColor and OCR Proofreader are trademarks of Caere Corporation. Other brands and their products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be noted as such. Such designations appearing in this manual have been printed with initial capitalization. 2 Welcome Welcome to OmniPage Pro, and thank you for buying our software! The following documentation has been provided to help you learn about OmniPage Pro. 6DEI Users Manual This manual provides information on features and procedures. It includes an introduction to OmniPage Pro, installation and setup instructions, task-oriented instructions, ways to customize tools, settings guidelines, and technical information. OmniPage Pro Guide This provides online information on features and procedures. See "Getting Online Help" on page 1-13 for more information. Release Notes This contains last-minute information about OmniPage Pro. Please read this before installing the application. Scanner Setup Notes This contains the latest information about supported scanners and scanner setup. Welcome - 3 Using This Manual This manual is written with the assumption that you know how to work in the Macintosh environment. Please refer to your Macintosh user's manual if you have questions about how to use dialog boxes, menus, scroll bars, and so on. The following conventions are used in this manual. Convention Italicized text Purpose · Emphasizes menu commands, dialog box options, labeled buttons, and file names For example: "Choose Open... in the File menu." · Emphasizes new terms the first time they are used · Emphasizes important words in a sentence Command key symbol ( = ) Illustrates keyboard shortcuts for certain tasks For example: means press the Command key and the letter "j" =J Note symbol Introduces a tip or an item of note Introduces cautionary text Warning symbol Welcome - 4 Chapter 1 Introduction to OmniPage Pro You probably do most of your business correspondence and other written projects on your computer. However, certain sources of information may not be immediately usable on a computer. For example, if you want to incorporate information from a magazine article into a document in your word processor, you somehow have to get the text from the article into your computer. Painstakingly retyping the article is not an appealing solution. OmniPage Pro offers a smart solution to increase your work productivity. OmniPage Pro's optical character recognition (OCR) technology accurately and easily converts scanned paper documents and image files into editable text for use in your favorite computer applications. You do not have to retype anything -- OmniPage Pro automatically does it for you. Please continue reading this chapter for information on these topics: · What Is Optical Character Recognition (OCR)? · The OmniPage Pro Interface · Getting Online Help · Product Support Introduction to OmniPage Pro - 5 What Is Optical Character Recognition (OCR)? What Is Optical Character Recognition (OCR)? Optical character recognition (OCR) is the process of turning an image into computer-editable text. An image is an electronic picture of text such as a scanned paper document or an electronic fax file. Images do not have editable text characters; they have many tiny dots (pixels) that together form a picture of text. During OCR, OmniPage Pro analyzes an image and defines characters to produce editable text. This is also called recognizing text. After OCR, you can export the recognized text to a variety of word-processing, page layout, and spreadsheet applications. About OmniPage Pro OCR In addition to text, OmniPage Pro can retain the following elements in a document during OCR. Graphics Photos, logos, and drawings are examples of graphics. Text formatting Font types, font sizes, and font styles (such as bold or italic) are examples of text formatting. Page formatting Column structure, paragraph spacing, and placement of graphics are examples of page formatting. OmniPage Pro recognizes printed text characters only. However, it can retain handwritten text, such as a signature, as a graphic element. The graphics, text formatting, and page formatting elements that OmniPage Pro retains depend on the settings you select for your document before OCR. See Chapter 4, OmniPage Pro Settings, for more information. Introduction to OmniPage Pro - 6 What Is Optical Character Recognition (OCR)? Basic Steps of OmniPage Pro OCR These are the basic steps of OmniPage Pro's OCR process: 1 Bring a document image into OmniPage Pro. You can scan a paper document or load an image file. The resulting image appears in the Image View. See "Bringing Document Images into OmniPage Pro" on page 27 for more information. Create zones to identify the parts of the document you want to recognize as text or retain as graphics. Zones are borders that enclose the parts of a document image that will get processed. You can create zones manually, automatically, or with a template. Any areas not enclosed by zones are ignored during OCR. See "Creating Zones on a Page" on page 29 for more information. Perform OCR to convert image information into editable text characters. During OCR, OmniPage Pro defines text characters in an image. After OCR, you can check for and edit any errors. See "Converting Images to Text" on page 37 for more information. Export the document to the desired location. You can save your document to a specified file format or place it on the Clipboard. See "Exporting Documents" on page 57 for more information. 2 3 4 Introduction to OmniPage Pro - 7 The OmniPage Pro Interface The OmniPage Pro Interface The main parts of OmniPage Pro's user interface include: · The AutoOCR Toolbar · The Document Window · The Thumbnail Window · Zone Info and Tool Palettes · The Settings Panel AutoOCR Toolbar Tool Palette Thumbnail window Zone Info palette Image View Document Window Text View Introduction to OmniPage Pro - 8 The OmniPage Pro Interface The AutoOCR Toolbar The AutoOCR Toolbar ® contains buttons that can activate each step of the OCR process. Choose Show Toolbar in the Window menu to open the AutoOCR Toolbar if it is closed. AUTO button Image button Zone button OCR button Export button Settings Panel The status line reports the current operation or the operation you can do next. Click the small arrow to show or hide the status line. button Proofread OCR · The AUTO button allows you to activate automatic processing. · The next four buttons -- Image, Zone, OCR, and Export -- have various commands that can be set for the operations you want to perform. You can set commands in the pop-up menus beneath each button. · The last two buttons -- Settings Panel and Proofread OCR -- are shortcuts for opening the Settings Panel and checking for errors in a recognized document. See "Basic Steps of OmniPage Pro OCR" on page 25 for more information on OCR procedures. The Document Window The Document window allows you to view and work with pages in the current document. Original images are displayed in Image View and recognized text is displayed in Text View. Choose Image View in the Window menu (or M) to display a document's Image View and make it active. Choose Text View in the = Introduction to OmniPage Pro - 9 The OmniPage Pro Interface Window menu (or active. =J) to display a document's Text View and make it Image View Text View Drag this splitter to the left or right to resize a view. You can select options in the Document section of the Settings Panel to specify how views in the Document window are displayed. See "Document Display Settings" on page 74 for more information. Introduction to OmniPage Pro - 10 The OmniPage Pro Interface The Thumbnail Window The Thumbnail window displays miniature pictures (thumbnails) of page images in the current document. You can use thumbnails to change pages, rearrange pages, and drag copies of images into other applications. Choose Show Thumbnails in the Window menu to open the Thumbnail window if it is closed. The bars beneath each thumbnail indicate what has been done to the image. Three bars indicate the image has been recognized. Two The thumbnail of the currently displayed page has a shaded background. bars indicate zones have been created. One bar indicates that the image has been loaded. See "Working With Documents" on page 48 for more information on working with thumbnails. Introduction to OmniPage Pro - 11 The OmniPage Pro Interface Zone Info and Tool Palettes The Zone Info and Tool palettes are displayed when the Image View of a document is active. Choose Show Tool Palette in the Window menu if the Tools palette does not appear when the Image View is active. Use the Tool palette to draw zones, modify zones, reorder zones, erase parts of the image, zoom in or out, rotate, or straignten an image. Choose Show Zone Info Palette in the Window menu if the Zone Info palette does not appear when the Image View is active. Use the Zone Info palette to select zone types, zone contents, zone styles, and style sets. You can move the palettes anywhere on your desktop as you work in the Image View. The palettes are automatically hidden whenever the Text View is active. See "Creating Zones on a Page" on page 29 for more information on zones. Introduction to OmniPage Pro - 12 Getting Online Help The Settings Panel The Settings Panel is the central location of OmniPage Pro settings. You can click the Settings Panel button or choose Settings Panel in the Settings menu to open it. The Settings Panel has six different sections of settings. Each section can be displayed by clicking its icon on the left. Click each icon to view and select different settings. Scroll to see more options. Getting Online Help You can use OmniPage Pro's balloon help and online reference guide to learn about features and procedures. These are available in the Guide menu after you install and launch OmniPage Pro. The Guide menu is located in the upperright corner of your screen. Choose Show Balloons to display balloon help for items in the interface. Choose OmniPage Pro Guide to get information about features and procedures. If you are using Macintosh OS 8 (or later), the Guide menu has been renamed as the Help menu, and appears as the right-most menu selection in the OmniPage Pro application. The OmniPage Pro Guide follows the conventions of the standard Apple Guide. Please refer to your Macintosh user's manual for more information on using Apple Guide. Introduction to OmniPage Pro - 13 Getting Online Help Balloon Help Balloon help consists of "balloons" that pop up on screen to explain the function of icons, menus, commands, dialog box options, and other items in an application interface. To turn balloons on, choose Show Balloons in the Guide menu. Different balloons appear as you move the mouse pointer over items in the interface. Choose Hide Balloons in the Guide menu when you want to turn off balloon help. OmniPage Pro Guide Choose OmniPage Pro Guide in the Guide menu to get online reference information for features and instructions for common tasks. Click this to show a general list of subjects. Click this to show an alphabetical list of subjects. Click this to do a search on a particular word or phrase. Introduction to OmniPage Pro - 14 Product Support Product Support For the fastest and easiest way to get help, please look for solutions in this manual or in the OmniPage Pro Guide. If you need additional help, product support and information are also available to registered users through the services listed in this table. Service How to Contact World Wide Web site Download Service (BBS) (patches, updates) Automated Fax Response Service (common Q&A) Telephone Support (fee-based troubleshooting) http://www.caere.com (+1) 408-395-1631 (8 bits, no parity, 1 stop bit) (+1) 408-354-8471 (within North America only) (+1) 408-395-8319 For international phone numbers, please refer to the Caere Product Support insert in your OmniPage Pro package. Please have the following information ready for the most efficient service when you call Caere Product Support: · OmniPage ...