Archived Data Techniques Forums

can you recommend any code, product, ideas.... about the ability of getting OCR text from an scanned or saved image?

 any available libraries?

what is the best resolution/type of the image in order to ocr?

ways to scan only certain areas in the image? (for example, scan only 4x2 inches at top/right of the image?

some available to scan/read barcodes into the image?

 Hi,

For OCR you can try www.transym.com or simpleocr.com. The transym toolkit  is very nice and is reasonably priced.

 You can scan only a portion of an image using the Twain control and code such as:

The following code shows how to scan a 1 inch by 1 inch square from the top left of an image.

Private Sub mnuScanPiece_Click()
    Dim lo As New ImTwain80Ctl.Layout
    Dim fr As New ImTwain80Ctl.Frame
    Dim dib As Long
    
    ImTwain1.SelectScanner
    
    fr.Left = 0
    fr.Top = 0
    fr.Right = 1
    fr.Bottom = 1
    lo.Frame = fr
    
    ImTwain1.SetCapability Capabilities.Current_Units, Units.Inches, DataTypes.Int16
    ImTwain1.SetCapability Capabilities.Image_Layout, lo, DataTypes.Layout_
    dib = ImTwain1.ScanPage(False)
    
    If dib <> 0 Then
        ImageControl1.hDIB = dib
        ImageControl1.Refresh
    End If
End Sub

The Scale Units can be set to centimeters if that is more convenient.

Sean, Thanks for the links about ocr libraries.

<<You can scan only a portion of an image using the Twain control<<

I know this, I need to rewrite my question.
I  scan and save (to tif) the entire page, but want to apply ocr only at some areas in the page. I think this will be functions to test in the ocr external libraries.
example: I scan the invoice for archive and reference, but want ocr only in  the first two top inches.

? Anybody with real ocr experiences th share?