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Creating Text from Images (OCR)

Documents clearly printed or typed can be scanned or imported to Laserfiche as images, and a process called Optical Character Recognition (OCR) can generate searchable text from these images. You can perform OCR processing on single or multiple documents, as well as on single or multiple pages within documents. You can also index those documents when the image is brought into Laserfiche.

Note: OCR is a resource-intensive process; it can be slow if image quality is poor, the image was scanned improperly, or if memory is limited.

Important: OCR is a resource-intensive process that cannot be performed by Web Access directly; however Web Access can be configured to send documents to a Laserfiche Distributed Computing Cluster Scheduler that is setup for OCR. Your system must be licensed for Laserfiche Distributed Computing Cluster, and your Web Access must be configured to communicate with the Distributed Computing Cluster Scheduler. The Laserfiche Client can perform OCR directly, without using Distributed Computing Cluster.

The following procedure can also be used to create text pages for electronic documents. For more information, see Retrieving Text from an Electronic File.

To generate text using OCR from one or more imaged documents

  1. From the Folder Browser, select or open the document(s) whose images will be processed by text recognition (OCR).
  2. From the toolbar, click Generate Text, or select Generate Searchable Text from the ClosedTasks menu.

  3. From the ClosedGenerate Searchable Text dialog box, make sure the OCR / Extract Text checkbox is selected.

  4. Optional: Click Options to configure OCR settings in the Options dialog box. Or, click More Info to open the OCR and Text Extraction Information dialog box.
  5. Make sure the Index entire document check box is selected.
  6. Click OK.

To generate text using OCR from one or more imaged documents

  1. From the Folder Browser, select or open the document(s) whose images will be processed by text recognition (OCR).
  2. From the toolbar, click Generate Text , or select Generate Searchable Text from the Tasks drop-down menu.
  3. The Generate Searchable Text dialog box will open. Select which pages you want to generate searchable text for and click OK.

Note: To configure OCR options or improve OCR results, see Options: Generate Text: General in the Laserfiche Client, or Settings: Generate Text: OCR Settings in Web Access.

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