OCR software needed

I am in need of some OCR software so I can scan some documents and save as templates for later use. Can anyone recommend a good OCR software that's either free or decently priced? My scanner is a Cannon MX340.

thanks

 

Try http://www.onlineocr.net/.
Otherwise, FineReader is very good.

 

The best product I have used for OCR is ABBYY FineReader Professional (10.0.102.109). I worked perfectly and recognized pdf accurately even badly scanned ones. Moreover, there is an option to retain layout perfectly. Other products I have used are Nitro PDF Pro (6.0.2.6) and PDF OCR (4.0).

 

thanks for the info- will check these out

 

I have an HP All-in-one that came with software that works pretty well. Can't you get something from Canon (for free)?

 

Another vote for ABBYY FineReader Pro 10, but it's expensive.

In terms of free alternatives, a year ago I had good results with Softi FreeOCR (setup file name = freeocr26.exe, not sure if the link works anymore). It uses the free tesseract OCR engine. I also don't know if that project is still alive, but it's worth checking out before you buy an expensive commercial alternative.

I was testing it with someone's free autohotkey script for grabbing screen content and converting it to text (similar to ABBYY's screenshot reader), to which end I also downloaded other bits and pieces of free graphics software (e.g. ImageMagick portable and potrace). The whole thing was a PITA to set up, but worked surprisingly well for interpreting screen content at least. The details of that project may be found here: http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11186

 

review here: Top 5 Free OCR Software Tools To Convert Images Into Text