AE OMNIPAGE PRO X CD MAC

Rating:
Summary: Counterproductive, Inflexible, Underfeatured, But Good OCR
Review: I bought this product after carefully reviewing ScanSoft's adds and on-line manual. Although I was surprised at the lack of certain features that are found in the Windows version (e.g., XML), my research led me to believe that this was an excellent choice for a Mac user whose project was to take back issues of a scientific journal and convert it into searchable pdf (image plus hidden field text).
Although the software tells you that you are about to produce a bitmapped (black and white) version, what you get instead is text on a grey background in a file that suggests that it is a greyscale. The pdf (either image + text or image only) is actually far larger than uncompressed TIF files! There is no mention of this problem in the manual but you can find it buried in the FAQ on ScanSoft's website. They have known about the problem, apparently for two years (the entry is dated 2002) and yet have chosen not to publicize what is a significant defect -- one that renders the product useless for many users.
There are other problems, although not as serious. Although the interface is fairly slick and easy to use, it is very inflexible. For instance, scans controlled by Omnipage Pro X can only be done in legal, letter and A4 paper sizes. If the paper you need to scan is a different size, you get one or more black borders. These can be removed by hand with the eraser tool they provide or in photoshop or some other graphic editor but that is hardly the point. You can work around it by going from the scanner's driver but, depending on your scanner, that may have additional drawbacks.
I can say more, but I hope you have gotten the point across.
On the postive side, the programs, as it should, does a good job on OCR. I did not try it but if you wish to convert scans to text only, this might be a good choice. But if you are making electronic archives of old documents, this is NOT a viable option. The files are both ugly (grey instead of white backgound) and too huge to put on the internet. So, for these important uses, this dog don't hunt.