Hello Wayne: Thank-you for the "black paper" suggestion! Scanners are such a trip! Look simple, and need every trick known to man to make them work. Your suggestion is most appreciated! Cordially yours, Young Snodgrass, KC9OE Elkhart, Indiana young.snodgrass@verizon.net ----- Original Message ----- From: "Wayne Jones" <jonesr007@hawaii.rr.com> To: <SENIOR-NEWBIE-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Sunday, August 21, 2005 9:26 PM Subject: RE: [SR-NEWBIE] Optical Character Recognition Software > One thing you might want to try -- some of the problem you are > encountering > is the "show-through" of the text printed on the reverse side of the > newspaper. Try placing a black piece of paper on the back of the > newspaper, > scan it, OCR it, and see what happens. I can see why scanned pictures may > be bad -- the moire effect -- but a straight text document may be easier > scanned with the blcak backing. > > > Aloha > Wayne, NH6K > > -----Original Message----- > From: Young Snodgrass [mailto:young.snodgrass@verizon.net] > Sent: Sunday, August 21, 2005 3:06 PM > To: SENIOR-NEWBIE-L@rootsweb.com > Subject: Re: [SR-NEWBIE] Optical Character Recognition Software > > Hello Barry and List: > > Thank-you for your suggestions and advice! Now that you mention it, I've > heard of "special" scanners for books, but I'd never seen one. I looked > at > the "Book-Eye" scanner, and it is easy to understand the physics needed > for > books, etc. > > I am certain one of my issues is that the newspaper / type images are not > "flat." I can see that the scanned pages are "distorted." (Not too > distorted, but probably tough on an OCR program.) > > However, another issue is that the program I was trying to use is just a > little too touchy. On someone else's suggestion, I tried the OCR program > included in MS Office 2003. And candidly, it did a better job than a > fairly > expensive OCR program that was very highly rated by "reviewers." > > I can see that I need to be more careful of my scans! > > I have a Canoscan unit I take with me into the field. It fits very nicely > into my computer bag. I bought it because I find folks will allow me to > scan or copy items that they will not allow me to take and return. > > Thank-you for your thoughts on this matter! > > Cordially yours, > > Young Snodgrass, KC9OE > Elkhart, Indiana > young.snodgrass@verizon.net > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Barry" <barry@yobunny.co.uk> > To: <SENIOR-NEWBIE-L@rootsweb.com> > Sent: Friday, August 19, 2005 1:57 PM > Subject: Re: [SR-NEWBIE] Optical Character Recognition Software > > >> Hello Young, >> >> Friday, August 19, 2005, 3:28:24 PM, you wrote: >> >> YS> I am looking for an OCR program for transcribing old newspaper >> YS> articles to searchable text. To date I've had marginal success in >> YS> this area, and I was hoping someone here could lead me to success. >> >> The equipment needed to be successful at this sort of OCR job is very >> specialised and very expensive ... do a Google search for 'Book Eye >> Scanner' and you'll see what I mean <lol> >> >> There are professional OCR packages that can use your own scanner and >> PC, but again - to get good results means paying quite a lot. I use >> Abbyy Fine Reader Pro version 5 ( free install from a magazine CD - >> current one is version 7 ) which scans and reads printed text very >> well providing it's not too grubby. You should be able to get a trial >> download to see if it will do what you want. >> >> HTH >> >> -- >> Best regards, >> Barry mailto:barry@yobunny.co.uk >> MicroSoft Free Zone running Xandros 2.0 Deluxe >> > > > ==== SENIOR-NEWBIE Mailing List ==== > Keep informed of the latest news and new databases, webpages and mailing > lists at RootsWeb. Subscribe to the weekly RootsWeb Review. To > subscribe, > start here: http://newsletters.rootsweb.com/ > > ============================== > Search Family and Local Histories for stories about your family and the > areas they lived. Over 85 million names added in the last 12 months. > Learn more: http://www.ancestry.com/s13966/rd.ashx >