Enterprise OCR Software Comparison

OCR (Optical Character Recognition) solutions convert scanned text images in multiple formats to machine-readable text. This has many data extraction and file processing use cases. One example is the scanning and indexing of paper catalogs and documents for digital storage and processing. This is now a mainstay for businesses looking to digitize their archives, whether they're old newspapers or receipts from years ago.

This article will show how you can do OCR to convert physical documents into digital formats using different Enterprise OCR software. Below is a list of the OCR software that will be discussed in this article.

• Rossum
• Adobe Acrobat Pro DC
• Nanonets
• IronOCR

Rossum

Rossum is an OCR software product that saves people time and effort in extracting data from Microsoft Office documents or PDF files. Rossum can quickly process and convert invoices and PDF forms into digitized documents. It is designed to scan and interpret various file types and to edit PDFs with structured data.

Rossum automatically takes layout, formatting, signatures, and other variables into consideration. Several features form the foundation of this product's processing capabilities. These features include in-depth integrations, coding semantics, automated confirmations, PDF editing, data extraction, document workflows, file uploading, document processing, image conversion, PDF conversion, document digitalization, and event notifications. Conversions triggered by these notifications can be set to match your business requirements.

Pricing

Rossum is not a free OCR product, but you can use its free trial on a web-based application. You can also download the desktop version that offers the same workflow to extract data from multiple documents for data entry.

Rossum

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC is a PDF editing software that can detect text from scanned documents and convert these documents into editable formats. Pro DC provides a complete PDF solution for any device. Within the app, users can create and edit PDF files, digitally sign PDFs, compress documents, and convert PDFs and other scanned documents into different formats (such as Microsoft Office formats or JPG image files).

In addition to its text recognition capabilities, Adobe Acrobat Pro DC can also crop, rotate, delete, and annotate pages in PDF documents.

Pricing

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC is not a free software product, but it offers a free trial for a limited time period. You can purchase it on the Adobe website or Acrobat reader mobile app.

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC

Nanonets

Nanonets is an AI-powered OCR solution that extracts data from documents without human interference. The program is hassle-free and error-free, and it can handle many languages for data capture. The solution can quickly assess captured data gathered from the paper, and the AI learns as usage grows. We can automate manual data entry using Nanonet's AI-based OCR technology. The software package can extract data from documents containing information in a linear format, such as invoices, purchase orders, and editable text files.

Pricing

Nanonets offers a free version of its software for beginners (capable of processing up to 100 pages) as well as a 7-day trial period. Nanonets is available on the Cloud, Windows, and Mac.

Nanonets

IronOCR: .NET OCR Library

IronOCR

The IronOCR .NET library is the best OCR software solution for extracting text from low-resolution images. The library supports all .NET versions. IronOCR also supports different screen resolutions and OCR engines (such as Tesseract).

Listed below are some fantastic features of IronOCR:

• Supports various file formats like JPG, PNG, TIFF, PDF, and many others.
• Can convert PDF files to editable documents with straightforward code.
• Corrects Low-Quality scans & photos using AI technology.
• Supports Barcode Reading.
• Supports 127 International languages.

Let's see how you can perform OCR on an image using the IronOCR library in a .NET project.

Extracting Data from Scanned Paper Documents

using IronOcr;

// Instantiate an IronTesseract object, which will perform OCR operations
var Ocr = new IronTesseract();

// Initialize an OcrInput object to handle input documents for OCR processing
using (var Input = new OcrInput())
{
    // Add a password-protected PDF document to the input
    Input.AddPdf("example.pdf", "password");

    // Read the input document and perform OCR, resulting in readable text output
    var Result = Ocr.Read(Input);

    // Output the extracted text to the console
    Console.WriteLine(Result.Text);
}

using IronOcr;

// Instantiate an IronTesseract object, which will perform OCR operations
var Ocr = new IronTesseract();

// Initialize an OcrInput object to handle input documents for OCR processing
using (var Input = new OcrInput())
{
    // Add a password-protected PDF document to the input
    Input.AddPdf("example.pdf", "password");

    // Read the input document and perform OCR, resulting in readable text output
    var Result = Ocr.Read(Input);

    // Output the extracted text to the console
    Console.WriteLine(Result.Text);
}

Imports IronOcr

' Instantiate an IronTesseract object, which will perform OCR operations
Private Ocr = New IronTesseract()

' Initialize an OcrInput object to handle input documents for OCR processing
Using Input = New OcrInput()
	' Add a password-protected PDF document to the input
	Input.AddPdf("example.pdf", "password")

	' Read the input document and perform OCR, resulting in readable text output
	Dim Result = Ocr.Read(Input)

	' Output the extracted text to the console
	Console.WriteLine(Result.Text)
End Using

Extracting Data from Images

using IronOcr;

// Initialize IronTesseract to handle OCR operations
var Ocr = new IronTesseract();

// Create OcrInput object, specifying the path to the image for OCR
using (var Input = new OcrInput(@"images\image.png"))
{
    // Optionally deskew the image to improve OCR accuracy
    Input.Deskew();

    // Optionally apply noise reduction for better accuracy, recommended if accuracy < 97%
    // Input.DeNoise();

    // Execute OCR on the input image and get the resultant text
    var Result = Ocr.Read(Input);

    // Print the extracted text to the console
    Console.WriteLine(Result.Text);
}

using IronOcr;

// Initialize IronTesseract to handle OCR operations
var Ocr = new IronTesseract();

// Create OcrInput object, specifying the path to the image for OCR
using (var Input = new OcrInput(@"images\image.png"))
{
    // Optionally deskew the image to improve OCR accuracy
    Input.Deskew();

    // Optionally apply noise reduction for better accuracy, recommended if accuracy < 97%
    // Input.DeNoise();

    // Execute OCR on the input image and get the resultant text
    var Result = Ocr.Read(Input);

    // Print the extracted text to the console
    Console.WriteLine(Result.Text);
}

Imports IronOcr

' Initialize IronTesseract to handle OCR operations
Private Ocr = New IronTesseract()

' Create OcrInput object, specifying the path to the image for OCR
Using Input = New OcrInput("images\image.png")
	' Optionally deskew the image to improve OCR accuracy
	Input.Deskew()

	' Optionally apply noise reduction for better accuracy, recommended if accuracy < 97%
	' Input.DeNoise();

	' Execute OCR on the input image and get the resultant text
	Dim Result = Ocr.Read(Input)

	' Print the extracted text to the console
	Console.WriteLine(Result.Text)
End Using

Pricing

IronOCR is free for noncommercial use. Licenses are required for commercial use, but a free trial is available for evaluation purposes. Its base value starts from $749.

IronOCR

Conclusion

This article introduced four powerful OCR products that can help individuals and businesses quickly automate their data processing tasks. The IronOCR library stands as a good alternative for extracting data from forms, business cards, or any other document. The IronOCR .NET library does not require external libraries to be installed on the machine where it's being used, which means that it can be used on any device with the .NET framework installed.

Iron Software offers a suite of five powerful software tools for the price of only two of them. Find more information on this page.