[Athen] image pdf to searchable pdf

[Kilcommons,Cath]

Beware the inexpensive PDF creation tool - many of these will not retain
text in columns and I have yet to find one that produces tagging.
Office 2007 may fill that gap with the download from Microsoft, but I
have yet to try it.

There is a option to upgrade to Omnipage Pro from Microsoft Office
Document Imaging.  Imaging is not a great OCR, but is probably available
in at least one of your Microsoft Office installations.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HP030812601033.aspx 
I have used Omnipage Pro extensively and I especially like it for
complicated documents and difficult fonts.  I think it was $150 to get
the upgrade from Imaging.

The Abbyy Sprint package that comes free with some scanners (Epson) is a
very tidy little OCR product.  Abbyy Pro is also an excellent, and is
very user friendly.

Adobe Acrobat Pro has a built-in OCR, but it is not as good as ABBYY or
Omnipage.

You can always use Acrobat on a trial download if you really need to go
low cost.

You could also check on your AT programs, TextHELP Read and Write
typically did a great job with a graphic PDF OCR'd back to PDF. 
Here is a link to a training module we produced last year, that has the
various links
http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/ATRC/alttext/alt_textbooks.htm#create

You may also want to check if premier-programming.com has anything that
meets your need.

Best,
Cath



-----Original Message-----
From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On
Behalf Of Stacy L. Smith
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 1:59 PM
To: athen at athenpro.org
Subject: [Athen] image pdf to searchable pdf

Does anyone know of a reasonably-priced (read:  under $100) piece of
software out there that will take an image-based pdf and convert it to a
searchable pdf?

I've done a bit of a google search and looked at CNET (ABBYY makes
something) but I thought I'd ask the list as well.

Thanks-
Stacy

Stacy Smith
Adaptive Technology Specialist
Disability Support Services
202 Holton Hall
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS  66506
Phone:  785-532-6441
FAX:  785-532-6457
Email:  stacylee at ksu.edu

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