Using the free version with ads
4
By Chadwick von chadly
Because I’m currently able to use this app for free, I can’t complain.
I do see accuracy problems that are greater than the percentage range in the description of the app, and those problems relate to the hand writing OCR reader to text converter. I’m using the English language only, no translation. I can’t really compare the accuracy of this app to other apps because I don’t have much experience with other apps due to subscription costs. That said, in my first full 8”x11” page, where every line was used to contain hand writing, and where that writing usually spanned each line from left to right, there were many errors, so many errors that the time I spent editing to correct the errors might be roughly half the time it would take to type the text myself without the use of OCR. Some of the errors include: how spacing is inserted or excluded; recognizing an asterisk (*) symbol; omitting words; confusing t’s and l’s; omitting words with hand written strike through (words with lines through them); confusing commas and periods (.,.,); capitalization errors; and general misspellings. The page I scanned came from an unedited jpeg picture of an inventory list, a picture I took with my iPhone camera, then printed it as a hard copy, and my printed page was far from being black and white (my fault). I know what you’re thinking: Why do that in the first place? The answer: To be able to mark up that page without destroying the original.
A feature that seems to be lacking in this app (unless I didn’t see where it was available) is a capability to first convert a scanned page into black and white, before OCR is applied to the scan, a feature which would improve color contrast and might therefore make it easier for OCR to correctly read hand writing. I have seen this feature in another OCR scanner app.
Another feature that seems to be lacking, at least in the free version, has to do with editing. It would be nice if this app came equip with suggestions or recommendations for correcting words that are possibly misspelled (words that do not appear in a dictionary, or are or should be highlighted by prevailing spell checkers), and these suggestions or recommendations would best be on a par with prevailing word processor and writing apps (including email and search engines).
Lastly, again having to do with word correction in the editing phase, a very nice feature to have would be a capability of comparing commonly appearing words for correct OCR hand writing to text conversion, or, alternatively, a feature in the editing phase, with the capability of comparing commonly appearing words in order to generate recommended or suggested corrections. Sometimes the same words are correctly converted; other times the same words are not correctly converted.
That is my two cents. Thanks for letting me use this app for free.
