The I.R.I.S. (Image Recognition Integrated Systems) Group on Monday announced the released of Readiris Pro 9 for the Mac. The latest version of the optical character recognition (OCR) software has a new engine, “autoformat technology,” a redesigned interface and more.
Readiris Pro recognizes and converts books, magazines, invoices, price lists reports and other files. as well as read-only PDFs, into editable text. You can save the results in a variety of output formats for use with word processors, spreadsheets, programs, PDF files, HTML files and more. Version 9 sports new toolbars and redesigned buttons for such tasks as the scanning or opening of a document, the language and output format choice and the recognition. New color thumbnails are designed to smooth the navigation from one document to another.
Based on a new OCR engine and a new “autoformat technology,” Readiris Pro 9 purportedly retypes faster and more accurately, according to I.R.I.S. There’s an “Ignore Exterior Area” feature that can limit the recognition zone; the OCR software will automatically analyze the image inside a specified zone and ignore the information located outside the zone.
Version 9 automatically identifies tables and marks them as table zone. Once the recognition is done, it reproduces them in the output file, allowing you to transform paper invoices, price lists, listings and any document containing tables in digital information. The page analysis (detection of text, table and graphic zones), page deskewing (for distorted images), page despeckling (to remove pixels that disturb recognition), and page orientation can be done automatically after scanning.
In other new features, Readiris Pro 9 can open read-only PDF files, offers a “flowing text” mode for simplified editing, adds the ability to convert paper documents into WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML files ready to be put online, now recognizes up to 104 different languages, and more. Also, an Asian OCR add-on is available for the recognition of Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
In addition to the usual Standard version, there’s now a Corporate version of Readiris Pro 9 for Mac OS that’s aimed at professionals who need to convert larger volumes of paper documents, as well as business cards. It includes all the features of the standard version and offers extra features. For instance, it offers a higher speed and accuracy and recognizes business cards from up to 53 different countries. It also lets you select a primary language and up to four secondary languages.
Readiris Pro 9 Standard Edition is available at an manufacturers suggested retail price of US$149; Readiris Pro 9 Corporate Edition costs $399. It’s compatible with Mac OS X (10.01 and higher, with 10.2.x recommended) and Mac OS 9.x.