Hi, Having been an Abbyy user for years, I am on it just about every day. Most of what I use it for is extraction of raw data from PDFs as well as taking documents I need to re-create in their original format(s), such as Word files. Those recreated docs are often used as the base for PDF forms created in Acrobat Pro. Your videos are a good primer for the software btw. You cover quite a bit of the good stuff and what may be missing would just get in the way of an intro video. So I watched your 2 videos on A16 and the big question I have is, 'what is the big difference other than the subscription model'? Certainly the interface has changed a bit, but the underlying mechanics seem to be the same. As i was watching your video, I had A15 and A16 (trial) up at the same time along with an identical PDF to work from. Frankly, I could not tell the difference once I got past the initial screen in A16. I certainly expect to upgrade at some point and along with that the subscription licensing will be there. However at this time, I am in no rush to do that and would actually like to wait for a couple of version cycles (16.1, 16.2 etc.) before jumping over. I am a big believer in the old adage 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' and A15 is doing as well as it always has. Unless A16 has some significant advantages, I plan on holding off. Can you elaborate on improvements to the software (mostly with PDF handling and OCR) that may not be apparent from a quick testing? Thanks Joe
That is a great question. I would hold off on upgrading if you can. A16 is a little buggy right now as its brand new. For example, it wont export images on the "best quality" option for images. Ive noticed that exported PDFs are a little more consistent and tag structure is more accurate than previous versions - which is important in the work I do. But yeah - I would wait on upgrading if it is already doing what you need.
@@TheAccessibilityGuy Image quality loss is common over the other version of Abbyy. Ive already reported it to the Abbyy support, but they said there is no option to keep higher image quality. It is especially visible in lower format documents (like A5 or so). Can't believe they didn't fixed it in new version. No reason to upgrade for sure. Would be nice so see side-to-side A15 vs A16 comparision, especially with same file OCR to see is there any upgrade. With all that AI revolution I hope to see more advanced OCR performance, understanding the context and so on. For now it can't even read the "10^5" and treats "^" as "ᴬ".
@@TheAccessibilityGuy I am lucky to possess the license for the 15 version. I hope that other commercial solutions like IRIS will improve their services while still offering a one time payment. I did not mean necessarily a free option, but I strongly oppose forced subscription.
Hi! Great tutorial! Do you think is possible with Abbyy Finereader to scan a PDF document that includes lots of email captures, scan the email address, the date and reorganized it automatically by dates?
Hi Shawn I came across your videos researching OCR tools. Would you say abbyyfinereader is one of the fastest OCR tools out there? I need to convert many large PDFs quickly as possible. So looking for the fastest solution. Thanks for all the research you put into this
100 percent. You can upload 1000s of pages at once. If the files are similar you can also create a template to apply to the docs in bulk. I would focus on one doc first and get your export settings locked in before doing a bulk conversion.
Great! Will definitely download the trial version and see if it works for us. Do you know if the software has automated bookmarking feature? Meaning.. the ability to create a template to auto bookmark specific terms when you run the OCR so you don’t have to manually. Again, thanks so much for your feedback!
@@nasserkhaja4655 I would play with the settings for sure for bookmarks. I know in Adobe you can create the bookmarks by heading structure. I'm unsure though if you can auto do it straight out of Abbyy.
@@TheAccessibilityGuy I've been playing a lot with the heading structures and bookmarks latelly, its pretty awsome, when it works. Its not very stable and I still have to do a lot of checking back in fort in Acrobat. Editing Styles in FineReader is a bit buggy. But I have been able to get a 30 page document from scanner to acrobat with all the right bookmarks and with almost no work to do on the tag tree. I am curently working on a protocole to do that with 100s of scanned documents, soI hope i can get it to work systematically!
If they spent just a little time improving the export for accessible PDFs - their software would be so much better! I agree that sometimes it works perfect, and other times its terrible. It is by far the best tool though for scanned documents. @@ValerieGariepy-yi8xb
@@ValerieGariepy-yi8xb Yes, you are correct; it is a capped version. I had to resort to using Parallels in order to run Windows on my Mac and utilize its complete capabilities
Does this tutorial include how to read the text images from VideoSubFinder? I've used borh VSF and FineReader 15 and everything ran smoothly as silk. AbbyFineReader managed to understand the text images and VSF managed to save the file as an SRT. But I had no choice but to upgrade to Abby 16. Now everything I did before no longer works. Abby converts the jpeg images to txt but its just gibberish characters. Its set to the correct language, simplified Chinese but it still doesn't understand it.
@@TheAccessibilityGuy I only choose the tab - Convert to other formats and I used to only select the OCR language of the subtitles used, for which this is Chinese. The output format document was always TXT, as this is what VSF needed to have. I've just choosed 'convert to RTF' no idea what the outcome will be. I'm just new to all this and I don't use Abby for anything else. I'll watch your video over the weekend. Thanks for your advice.
Hi! Many OCR software... and none to recognise handwriting... Can ABBY recognise handwriting? Do you know any software that recognizes handwriting? Thank you.
That's a good question. Handwriting is very particular for obvious reasons. This program can do an ok job at it. I'm not really sure of any other programs that do it very well
Hello, Finereader is getting worse when it comes to use it as a screen reader user. It was never the Software of best Practise in Terms of an accessible UI. But the Version 16 is so bad and I bet the next Version won't be accessible at all, since the Company seems not to care about it. I read the Statement on the Accessibility of Finereader, but honestly, it sounds like they don't want to say "fuck off" to their Users, just threating them so and hope they will understand and go without making any noise.
@@TheAccessibilityGuy Right. I had some discussion with them, 'cause I don't want to pay the full price for just getting a Software I can't use widely, even the core OCR-Feature requieres a lot of user Experience from a screenreader user to overcome the obstacles. I mean, I like to feature that you can create a pdf/ua-kompatible PDF. Even the File out of the Box is far better what I am used to get from others. Still, a Company of this size could do far more to make their GUI more accessible. Finereader is used by Professionals also, so there is one software more which keeps visually impaired people away from getting a job. Employers think that blind people can't use a Computer. They don't know that Companys can't/don't want to make good software.
