The product is discontinued by the developer but available on Mac Informer

ABBYY FineReader Express

Highly accurate and easy-to-use multi-lingual OCR application designed specifically for Mac users.
3.6 
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Demo
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119 MB
Demo
Used by 759 people
Awards: Mac Informer Editor Rating 5
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ABBYY FineReader Express is an OCR tool for your Mac. It allows you to convert scanned documents or digital photographs into editable files. For example, you can convert a few scanned pages into a text file that you can then edit as if it were written with Open Office. This tool should keep the formatting of your documents, but that is not always possible and, in all honesty, I haven't seen an OCR app that can do that perfectly.

When you launch ABBYY FineReader Express, you will see a list of tasks. From here you can convert an image to a text document, a spreadsheet document, an HTML document, or a searchable PDF file. You can also change the document's language from a drop-down list.

I tested this app by converting a text PDF file into a text document (the first option). The process took a little under a minute. The file I used had a few tables, some images, a few titles and some text. All the text that was in the file was easily recognized and rendered editable. The tables were conserved and they looked almost identical to the ones in the PDF file. The images were where they were in the original file. With some work I was able to recreate the PDF file in the RTF file that this tool created for me.

All in all, this tool works surprisingly well. It couldn't be easier to use and it is fast. It might be a little expensive, but the time that a good OCR tool can save you has no price.

JF Senior editor
José Fernández
Editor rating:
rating

Screenshots (7)

Review summary

Pros

  • Multiple conversion options
  • Precise recognition
  • Option to change languages

Cons

  • May freeze during conversion

Comments (4)

3.6
Rating
42 votes
5 stars
12
4 stars
12
3 stars
9
2 stars
9
1 stars
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Your vote:

F
rating Fish
Nice one. This year they released a new version, FineReader Pro for Mac. Waiting for promo offers to buy it with a discount.

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G
Guest
I am just curious, is this a trial version or what?

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G
Gustav Olafsson
Only yesterday did I try to recognize two pages in FineReader and edit them a bit. Man, it was more than a challenge: it was a crusade, an apocalyptic battle with my computer! As for the basic functions, I got along with them quite fast, but as soon as I started working with more advanced features, everything turned to a nightmare, as the lay-out kept getting broken again and again and my so carefully, so thoroughly, so meticulously edited text disappeared in thin air.

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