FAQs

ABBYY FineReader 9.0 Sprint is a "light" version of ABBYY FineReader Professional that is provided with some scanner models.
This application is designed for converting document scans into editable texts. This simple application will help you to save recognized texts as Microsoft Word or Excel documents. Built on ABBYY FineReader OCR technology, the application ensures high quality OCR and retains the formatting of original documents.
For more complex documents we recommend ABBYY FineReader 10 Professional Edition. This is a powerful yet easy-to-use OCR application that delivers superior accuracy in converting almost any type of documents, including various office documents, tables and spreadsheets, magazine articles, books, and even faxes and digital photographs.
The trial version of ABBYY FineReader 10 Professional Edition is available on our Web site at http://finereader.abbyy.com/trial.

• Processor –  1GHz processor or higher
• Hard-disk Space – 250 MB HDD for program installation, 512 MB for operation
• Size of RAM – 512 MB RAM
• Operating System – Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows 2000

>> System Specifications

TWAIN is an acronym for “Technology Without An Interesting Name”, a standard software protocol and applications programming interface (API) that regulates communication between software applications and imaging devices such as scanners and digital cameras.

Use the scanner driver dialog box to select scanning options. The appearance of the dialog box and a description of its elements should be available in the documentation accompanying your scanner. In general, observe the following guidelines:

• Make sure that your scanner is connected properly and switched on.
  Consult your scanner's documentation to ensure it is set up correctly. Be sure to install the software provided with your scanner. Some scanner models must be switched on before you power up the computer.
• Place your documents face down on the scanner, making sure they are properly adjusted. Skewed images may be converted incorrectly.
• Printed documents are best scanned in grayscale at 300 dpi.
  Conversion quality depends on the quality of the source document and scanning parameters. Poor image quality may have an adverse effect on the quality of conversion. Be sure to select the scanning parameters appropriate for your document.

This message means that ABBYY FineReader 9.0 Sprint cannot find your default scanner.

1. Set up your scanner manually.
   Go to File menu and choose Select Scanner.
   Specify the right driver for your scanner and try to scan a page using ABBYY FineReader Sprint again.
2. Check the scanner driver using a third-party application.
   If you are unable to scan after setting up the scanner driver via Select Scanner (see step 1), the problem is most likely with your scanner driver. To test the scanner driver, use any other third-party application (not the program supplied with the scanner).

It does. For instance, a poor fax copy can cause recognition problems, as well as a low-contrast scan or a document image that has a lot of speckles on it. ABBYY FineReader 9.0 Sprint delivers special image pre-processing features that help to eliminate speckles and skewing of the original. Skewed scans and speckled images will make your OCR program work harder and may increase a number of errors.

Selecting the Right Resolution

The quality of conversion is affected by scanning resolution. Poor quality scans may produce inferior results.
Recommended scanning resolution is 300 dpi.
Important! ABBYY FineReader 9.0 Sprint shows best OCR performance when vertical and horizontal resolutions are the same.

Very high resolution settings (over 600 dpi) result in greater recognition and conversion times without any noticeable increase in recognition quality. Very low resolution settings (below 150 dpi) may adversely affect the quality of recognition and conversion.

Tuning Brightness

Scanned images must be legible. Wrong brightness settings may adversely affect the quality of recognition and conversion.
In most cases the medium brightness value of 50% will be suitable.

Recognition Languages
ABBYY FineReader 9.0 Sprint supports 179 recognition languages, including 36 languages with dictionary support. For languages with dictionary support you may use the FineReader spell-checking system.

Interface languages
ABBYY FineReader 9.0 Sprint supports the following user interface languages: Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional Korean, Japanese, Turkish.

To be able to scan/open multiple pages, your scanner driver must support this feature. Most of the scanner drivers support multiple page scanning/opening, but some may not support this feature.

If recognition results contain a lot of mistakes, try one of the following:

1. Change scanning brightness:
   • If the image letters are smudged, stuck together or dark increase brightness (i.e. make the image lighter).
   • If the image letters are torn or light and thin, decrease brightness (i.e. make the image darker).
2. Set up scanning resolution:
   
   • Select 300 dpi for texts in 10pt fonts or lager.
   • Select 400-600 dpi for texts 9pt fonts or smaller.
3. Try a different scanning mode – Grayscale or Black&White.
4. Make sure you have selected the right recognition language in the Language menu
5. If you see that a table appears as simple text without table formatting or that a part of a picture is represented as text etc, FineReader 9.0 Sprint may have drawn the blocks incorrectly. To remedy the problem, draw the blocks and select block types manually.

Yes, ABBYY FineReader 9.0 Sprint can recognize color documents. For maximum recognition quality, specify color pictures as Picture blocks.

Almost any. The full version of ABBYY FineReader 10 Professional Edition allows you to improve OCR quality on documents with special fonts or documents containing special characters (e.g. mathematical symbols) by using Training mode. In other words, you can teach the program to distinguish specific characters which look very much alike in some fonts, for example “1” and “i”. ABBYY FineReader 9.0 Sprint does not offer this possibility.

There are some cases where FineReader 9.0 Sprint can change formatting. For example, a simple table, if defined as text by mistake, will look completely different from the original. It is important to mark blocks as appropriate according to the original document.

When recognizing a document, the program attempts to detect the following areas on the image: Text, Picture, and Table. The program relies on this analysis to identify the areas and order of recognition and to recreate the original formatting. The areas are enclosed in color frames, each area type having its own color.

You can use the Tab key to navigate through the areas. Each area is numbered and these numbers determine the order of navigation.
To select an area manually:

1. On the "How can I improve OCR quality?" toolbar, select on of the tools:
   • Draw Text Area.
     The program will convert this area into text.
   • Draw Picture Area.
     The program will save this area as a picture.
   • Draw Table Area.
     The program will reproduce the table contained in this area.
2.  Use your mouse to draw a frame around an area.

You cannot edit text directly in FineReader 9.0 Sprint. To be able to edit recognized text, you need to export it into Microsoft Word or a similar application for spell-checking and polishing. Also it is possible to edit the recognized document within FineReader 10 Professional Edition.

Advanced versions of ABBYY FineReader, such as Professional Edition or Corporate Edition, offer new standards of performance providing unmatched accuracy of recognition, exact layout retention and high productivity. For more information, visit the Product features page.

>> Download a trial version of ABBYY FineReader 10 Professional Edition.

Please visit the System Specifications page.

As a Sprint user, you can buy ABBYY FineReader 10 Professional Edition at a discount!