Hello pendleton!
Taking scanned images and recognizing and editing the text in this
manner is called Optical Character Recognition or OCR for short. These
OCR programs take a scanned image and look for patterns that represent
letters. Good OCR programs can recognize images and text and keep the
formatting allowing you to edit the images or text to your liking and
reprint the document that you changed.
I have done OCR on my books to convert them to my personal ebook
reader and am pleased with the results. OCR programs are not perfect
but most of the time they will be correct. Sometimes, though, they
incorrectly "recognize" a character (a letter) and I must edit it by
hand. This is not a problem for small books or single pages, but for
long books this can be tedious to read though the entire text. OCR
programs that are "smart" can use a spelling dictionary to compare
recognized words with the word it "thinks" is correct and show you
there is a discrepancy. This greatly helps fix OCR errors and can be a
big help in the end. So the main thing to do if you go the OCR route
is to find the best OCR program. (I have several recommendations in
the OCR section below.)
That is one method for how to do what you want. (See below for how to
do this step by step).
There may be an easier way depending on the text you wish to
recognize.
If the text is not much to type and it is behind a white (or solid
color) background
(white inside a speech bubble for example) then you may be able to
scan the image and edit it.
You could delete the blurry text and then use the text tool of many
image editing programs
and type in the correct and non-blurry text yourself. That would be
the best way if you do not have much to type. If you have a lot to
type, then try the OCR method.
The Image Editing method:
Use this method if you can type all the text in (if the amount to type
is not too much) and
the background for the text is white or of a solid color.
1. Scan the image.
2. Open the image in an image editor.
3. Select the text in a box using the select tool.
4. Press delete or use a command that will delete (turn to a solid
color you set or white)
the selected are.
5. Use the Text tool (Usually an uppercase 'A' or 'T') and select your
font, size, and styles
6. Type the text in the section you just cleared.
7. Voila! Cleaner text!
The OCR method:
This method uses a program that can preserve images while recognizing
text and allowing you to edit it. You need a "smart" ocr program such
as
TextBridge
http://www.scansoft.com/textbridge/
$80 for Pro 11 version
or
PaperPort
http://www.digitalriver.com/dr/v2/ec_MAIN.Entry10?V1=339132&PN=1&SP=10023&xid=21763
$99 for 8.0 full version
Generally, the best OCR software that is for home use is <$100 and
will allow you to preserve your images, scan, recognize and edit text,
publish to pdf and various formats, be very accurate, and do so with
the least amount of human intervention.
There are free OCR programs such as
SimpleOCR
http://www.spyfind.com/ocr.html
Free
But they are not as good at keeping images.
You follow this procedure which is generalized for most OCR programs:
1. Scan the image[s]
2. Recognize the text
3. Edit and correct the text
4. Save/Print or format the final product depending on how good the
OCR program is.
5. Done!
You can use a combination of the above methods as well by using the
OCR to scan the text
and then past the text into the text tool when you are editing the
image.
That could be a way you can do this without buying a good OCR program.
Anyway you do this, it is going to be time consuming so your best bet
is to do the above then show a friend how to do it for you. :)
This is not legal advice, just an opinion. You can edit the brochures
and use them for personal use only, unless you own the copyright on
them (or have permission from the copyright owner of the brochures or
they are in the public domain). Such editing with non-commercial
intent is covered in the "fair use" clause of the DMCA (Digital
Millinum Copyright Act). That is not legal advice however, so use good
judgement and contact a lawyer about such copyright questions if you
need to.
I hope that answers your question.
If you have anymore questions about this please "Request Answer
Clairification" and I'll do my best to help you further.
[In the meantime I'm looking for free OCR software that can keep
images.]
Useful Links
Project Gutenberg "Making Etexts from Paper Originals" paper"
http://promo.net/pg/vol/a_v_anders.html
From Paper to PDF:
About scanning text
http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/00/06/05/2353219.shtml
About scanning books
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/07/2117231&mode=thread&tid=137
OCR Programs:
Windows OCR Programs:
TextBridge
http://www.scansoft.com/textbridge/
Cuneiform '99
http://www.ocr.com/
OmniPage
http://www.caere.com/omnipage/
Unix Based Programs:
http://documents.cfar.umd.edu/ocr/
About OCR:
http://www.scansoft.com/omnipage/ocr/
http://www.dataid.com/aboutocr.htm
http://www.imageprocessingtools.com/ocr.html
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/o/optical_character_recognition.html
Search Strategy
"free ocr software"
://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=%22free+ocr+software%22&btnG=Google+Search
"about ocr"
://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=%22about+ocr%22&btnG=Google+Search |
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