Finereader vs. Transformer Thread poster: Heinrich Pesch
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Heinrich Pesch 
Finland
Local time: 05:35
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
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I'm going to buy Finereader 10, but I have also noticed the product Abbyy Transformer. I installed the trial version of Transformer, but the first result was disappointing. I have used Finereader since version 7. Is there any reason for using Transformer instead of Finereader? Please share your opinion!
Regards
Heinrich
| | | | Susan Welsh
United States
Local time: 22:35
Russian to English
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| Transformer disappointing? | Dec 22, 2009 |
How did you find Transformer "disappointing"? I bought Transformer because it is cheaper, and I figured it would suffice for my purposes, since I don't need to OCR non-electronic data (such as paper documents). I don't have much experience with these tools. Transformer does do some strange things, but I figured that was to be expected. In what way have you found Finereader superior in its results?
(Sorry to "answer" your question with a question!)
Susan
| | | | Heinrich Pesch
Finland
Local time: 05:35
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Disappointing | Dec 22, 2009 |
As you can only scan two pages with the trial version, I could not test transformer extensively. One customer sends me update of technical documents in pdf, where the new texts are in red. The text is in two columns, sometimes even three, and a lot of photos in between.
The result of the transformer scan was really bad. The text was put into tables, and from each line only the first half was visible. The rest was hidden. Guess I would have to adjust each table width in order to be a... See more As you can only scan two pages with the trial version, I could not test transformer extensively. One customer sends me update of technical documents in pdf, where the new texts are in red. The text is in two columns, sometimes even three, and a lot of photos in between.
The result of the transformer scan was really bad. The text was put into tables, and from each line only the first half was visible. The rest was hidden. Guess I would have to adjust each table width in order to be able to translate it.
But also the first experience with Finereader 10 was disappointing! I know how Finereader 8 works on these documents, so I did not notice any improvement of the scanning process. Also loading of the pages is in no way faster in the new version. So I think I will stick with my old Finereader for a while.
Finereader generates text-boxes where text is in odd places and it sees text where there are only small icons. I wish the developers would finally recognise the needs of translators for cleanly formatted text docs.
These OCR-softwares generate too many font-changes. The scanned text is not ready for CAT-programs like SDLX or Trados TE, because you get a lot of unnecessary tags. Only Word-based CAT like Wordfast can manage. Or you have to remove the tags generated by OCR, which does not work all the time.
Regards
Heinrich
[Bearbeitet am 2009-12-22 06:41 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Transformer is a more specialized tool | Dec 22, 2009 |
Transformer is fine given some tweaking and tailoring. However, it can only replace FineReader as far as PDF files are concerned. If you do a lot of scanning and OCR using paper originals, Transformer will not be very helpful. FR, on the other hand, can do both scanning and PDF recognition, so it's more versatile. Just try to avoid FR version 9, it was not very impressive compared to 8 or 10.
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| No need for V10 | Dec 22, 2009 |
I personally don't like FineReader V9 and V10 - for me V7 and V8 are the best!
ABBYY Transformer is a very good tool, when you want to select tables, texts and pictures manually.
Another good tool for PDF-conversion is SolidPdfConverter from SolidDocuments. I'm using version 3.1, now is v6 available. It can process very complex PDF's. After some reformatting in MS Word you can get brilliant results. Trial version available at <... See more I personally don't like FineReader V9 and V10 - for me V7 and V8 are the best!
ABBYY Transformer is a very good tool, when you want to select tables, texts and pictures manually.
Another good tool for PDF-conversion is SolidPdfConverter from SolidDocuments. I'm using version 3.1, now is v6 available. It can process very complex PDF's. After some reformatting in MS Word you can get brilliant results. Trial version available at http://www.soliddocuments.com/
From my personal experience, one tool for PDF-processing is not enough
Regards,
Egiz ▲ Collapse
| | | | esperantisto
Local time: 05:35
Member (2006)
English to Russian
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | The question is quite pointless | Dec 22, 2009 |
ABBYY Transformer is merely a trimmed version of ABBYY FineReader, precisely, FineReaders’s PDF PCR engine sold as a standalone product. Thus what you’re asking is: “FineReader vs. FineReader”. This means, if you get unsatisfactory results from Transformer, ones from FineReader won’t be better. Instead, try out other de-PDF-ers such as made by SolidDocuments or ScanSoft.
I use FR 8.0 and as I can judge from users’ opinions, neither 9.0 nor 10.0 offer any significant improvement.
| | | | | Beware of upgrades | Dec 22, 2009 |
esperantisto wrote:
This means, if you get unsatisfactory results from Transformer, ones from FineReader won’t be better.
"Unsatisfactory" here probably results from the automated settings, which are generally a disaster in any software. If you want to avoid trouble with OCR processes, manual zone definition (or reasonable templates) and saving without formatting are always the best options. Too many people get seduced by the appearance of an OCR document saved with formatting and suffer needlessly for hours afterward when the document misbehaves. Someone with a bit of skill using styles in MS Word can reformat a large document reasonably fast if necessary. Since I charge the time in one way or another, I don't care, and the customer gets a clean source document as part of the delivery too most of the time.
Heinrich - be careful about that upgrade. As I mentioned elsewhere, as of v8 FineReader started to respect PDF passwords, so in some cases you might not be able to convert the documents. If you have problems opening newer PDFs with FineReader, you might try opening them with the latest Adobe Reader (9.2 I think) and printing to PDF from there using an old freeware driver like Ghostscript. That's my trick for making these new PDFs accessible to old technology.
If you do upgrade, be sure to keep an installed copy of your v7 FineReader somewhere, because the day may come when you need it.
| | | | Claudio Porcellana (X)
Italy
| FineReader started to respect PDF passwords? | Dec 22, 2009 |
never noticed!
I've succesfully converted many protected PDFs without any problem ...
and about the possible upgrade, I found that v9 (my current one) is much faster than v8
finally, I agree with Kevin that one can't do any OCR without some manual work
Claudio
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| Transformer is already inside FineReader | Dec 23, 2009 |
Actually, Transformer is an OCR wizard, whereas FineReader offers manual control of the process.
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Claudio Porcellana wrote: v9 (my current one) is much faster than v8
• v8 produces better RTF if the source is heavily formatted (frames are easily disabled in the options) — better for CATs.
• v9 enforces enframing of text pieces and you cannot disable frames for RTF output. As a result you might get awful text that will not be segmented correctly by CATs. However, small fonts, dirty and jammed paper is recognises better.
I usually run batch scanning by any scan manager, then feed the images to both versions and compare the results. They really act in different ways.
[Редактировалось 2009-12-23 10:22 GMT]
| | | | Heinrich Pesch
Finland
Local time: 05:35
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Transformer part of Finereader? | Dec 23, 2009 |
I don't quite believe that Transformer is included in Finereader. Transformer should allow saving MS Word files as pdf, but Finereader can't. I tried, but it only takes image formats.
But also Transformer throws up an error message when I try to save a single page Word doc to pdf.
But I noticed already that updating to version 10 is not an option. I'll stick to 8 for the time being.
Regards
Heinrich
| | | | | It really is... | Dec 23, 2009 |
Heinrich Pesch wrote: I don't quite believe that Transformer is included in Finereader.
• Transformer 1.0 was released as a stand-alone tool.
• Transformer 2.0 was released as a stand-alone tool and was also included into the contemporary version of FineReader. And it is always there since.
Transformer should allow saving MS Word files as pdf, but Finereader can't. I tried, but it only takes image formats. But also Transformer throws up an error message when I try to save a single page Word doc to pdf.
PDF Transformner is good for opening PDF files to RTF, not vice versa. To convert DOC to PDF, you can use lots of FREE tools, like DoPDF or any other Print-to-PDF driver.
FR9 can save result to PDF:
[Редактировалось 2009-12-23 11:17 GMT]
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| I'd stick to FineReader | Dec 24, 2009 |
We currently have FineReader 9 and although it is far from being perfect, it has improved from earlier versions. Personally I'd stick with FineReader which gives you more control of what happens with your document.
| | | | Simon Foakes
Brazil
Local time: 23:35
Portuguese to English
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| Rolf Keller
Germany
Local time: 04:35
English to German
| Default settings ... | Jan 25, 2014 |
KSL Berlin wrote:
results from the automated settings, which are generally a disaster in any software.
Your statement should be printed in large red letters and distributed to any professional user. The 'P' in 'PC' means 'personal', so one has to personalize his or her PC.
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