Abbyy Fotoreader

Abbyy’s Finereader is one of the best-known OCR tools for converting scanned documents into editable ones. This new product uses the same technology to capture text from photos.

Fotoreader integrates with Word and Excel, and can create PDF files containing both converted text and images taken from the source photo. The process of converting a photo is simple: choose how you want to export it (Word, Excel, PDF or Rich Text), pick an image, and after a few seconds the document will appear. If the results aren’t good enough you can switch to the Fotoreader window to make changes.

The Fotoreader window overlays the parts of the photo it thinks contain useful content, marking them green for text, red for images and blue for tables of information. The software does a good job of calculating which types are appropriate, but a few seconds spent tweaking these usually yields better results.

We found the software impressively accurate. A half-page PCW review was converted correctly, albeit with a few unnecessary italicisations. After correcting the software, which had mistaken the product screenshot for a table, it exported a usable copy of the review as a PDF file.

A feature table taken from a PCW lab test was converted reasonably into Excel, although two rows were merged into one and a few ticks became letters. Half a page of small white text on a red background was converted with just two minor errors, but when converting photos of business cards the @ signs in email addresses often turned into zeros.

A second tool, Screenshot Reader, allows you to select an area of the screen and convert it to text. This isn’t a product for everyone, and for converting business cards only we’d recommend a dedicated scanner, but it does its job at a reasonable price.