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OmniPage 16 Review
User Submitted OmniPage 16 Reviews
Date: 2009-01-06
difficult to use and unstable
I used past versions of Omniplace at Kinkos and found it easy. So I figured that the latest version 16 must be even better! So I decided to buy it and should have listen to the majority of negative reviews from Amazon users to save $100.
After 3 days I'm still trying to figure out how to best use this product, it is not intuitive at all and help does not really help.
Even worse, it happened already several times that suddenly the program would stop and disappear from the screen without any warning. As a consequence you loose all your work since the last save!
To conclude, it is so difficult to use, and my experience is that the OCR does not perform very well (lots of miss recognition or no recognition) and it breaks down. It would be probably faster to retype the scanned document than scan it, OCR it and then manually correct Omniplace errors...
Date: 2008-12-12
Underwhelming Considering Its Reputation
I purchased this software as one component of a home electronic document management system---an autofeeding/duplexing document scanner, a 1TB hard drive to hold the scans, a decent shredder to dispose of papers once they were scanned, and OmniPage 16 to convert the scans from "image-type" PDFs to "searchable-type" PDFs. My goal was to finally stop filing in a filing cabinet all of the many papers I need to keep---credit card statements, receipts, etc.---and instead capture electronic scans of them then shredding the originals. Having the scans OCRed would allow me to search for text within the documents if I needed to find a document out of the many thousands I plan to scan over the years.
Let's start with the good: OmniPage 16 certainly converts images of text into search-recognizable text, and can save the resulting document in PDF format. This process also reduced the file size as well, so OCRing then deleting the original scan will save some hard drive space. The package does extremely well at recognizing text, and you can instruct it to learn unrecognized words by adding them to its dictionary. Prior to buying OmniPage 16 I tried a cheaper shareware version, and that didn't even recognize half the words in the scan. With OmniPage 16, text recognition is not a concern.
Now, the downside. There are actually three issues I've had with the product. The most significant concern is the tendency for the program to simply close without warning. I've seen this happen in two scenarios---if you select too many documents simultaneously to OCR, and if performing too many consecutive OCR jobs without a break. In these two situations the program will simply close without warning. The second issue is the inability to save non-alphanumeric text strings into the dictionary. On some documents, the same string of asterisks or dashes appear, and OmniPage 16 will always recognize it as an unknown word. Unfortunately you cannot add that string into the dictionary so it won't keep coming up unrecognized. The third issue I've encountered is the tendency for the software to think noncharacters are words. It picks up the corners of shapes, dot patterns, and other graphic elements as unknown words that have to be ignored each and every time.
Lastly of note, although not an issue, is a feature I would like to have seen. That cheaper shareware I mentioned earlier? It would not only save the OCRed version into a target folder, it would also move the original version into a different target folder as well. OmniPage 16 doesn't do this; instead it leaves the original version of a completed document right where it was. This means I have to move it out manually so I can continue OCRing the remaining docs in the folder. You might wonder why I don't just OCR all of the documents in the original folder, but if you see my first downside issue you'll know why.
All in all, despite its shortcomings, it's still the best there is.
Date: 2008-09-12
don't buy it
I would have given 0 stars if possible. I'm sure it it is just as arrogant (if software can be arrogant--or its makers are) as 15. I bought Omnipage 15 to scan pages and had a lot of problems, so I uninstalled it. Unfortunately the program seems to have taken over my scanner and every picture I scan now is unreadable. A popup tries to reinstall Omnipage and won't let me open the picture files any other way. So all my scanned pictures are unusable. A company spokesperson said I could get technical help unintalling. Yet when I call the number he provided, a machine tells me I need to pay $19.95 per minute! Then puts me on hold!
Date: 2008-05-18
This product borders on fraud!
I just made the singularly bad mistake of buying this software at the local Fry's Electronics (at full price no less), only to find that it won't even start up on my system, even after a successful install! And it is only at this point that I learn about the fact that they charge you for service support. This is crazy!
It is simply unacceptable to not provide some sort of free support, or at the very least a better FAQ that addresses this problem, since plainly I'm not the only one suffering it.
***STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY AND ITS PRODUCTS*** Lack of free support for their buggy product borders on out and out FRAUD. For all intents and purposes I'm out $[...] plus whatever I wasted in taxes on this POS.
Obviously, much blame attaches to me personally for not doing my homework and just impulse buying. (In my defense, I seldom buy specialty software like this, so I'm a bit of a neophyte). I will NEVER do this again.
FYI - Currently I'm running Win2K, SP4, but have plans to upgrade to XP. I can only pray these problems will go away at that point.
Date: 2008-02-26
Meets the basic needs
The product meets my needs (article review and editing). I did experience a problem with registration and activation but was able to overcome the issue with perseverance. Much depends on expectations. Most of the work I do involves editing text. Perhaps for other more involved work this program may not be suitable (OP16 Pro?). Installation went well and the program appears to be performing well.
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