Optical character recognition (OCR) software is very much a niche market. Most people will never need to do any OCR work at all.

But if you do find you need to scan documents and convert them into text that can be stored and edited on your PC, a good OCR program is worth its weight in gold.

There are two requirements for an OCR program: accuracy and ease of use. Abbyy's FineReader certainly scores well on accuracy. To put the software through its paces, we scanned a number of pages from newspapers and magazines. We intentionally chose pages with complex layouts and multiple blocks of text and graphics.

FineReader did not achieve 100 per cent accuracy, but its results were impressive. It successfully preserved the page layouts, separated the various text and graphics elements and converted the text into a file that we could check and edit on screen.

The main text on each page was scanned without any errors, and we were impressed that the program managed to pick up formatting details such as the use of bold characters within larger blocks of text.

FineReader also did a good job of dealing with more complex layout details such as text that was printed over a background image, a task that often confuses OCR programs. The one detail that consistently stumped it, though, was coloured text printed on a red background.

Even so, it performed better than we expected, and its level of accuracy was commendable for a program that costs a mere £70.

FineReader's interface is fairly straightforward and is divided into three main areas. A panel on the left-hand edge of the screen displays thumbnails of the pages that you have scanned, and next to this is a larger view of the currently selected page. The final area is an editing window that allows you to check and edit the actual text created by the program.

Possible errors are highlighted in blue, and a spell-checker is also provided. Once you have checked your pages, you can save them in a variety of text and graphics formats. There is even a useful option for converting pages into HTML, allowing you to turn printed pages into web pages in a matter of seconds.

Most of these features were fairly easy to use, but we did encounter one or two rough edges along the way. When we ran FineReader for the first time, its various toolbars were all hidden for some reason, so we were initially unable to locate some of the tools mentioned in the Quick Start guide.

The manual is vague at times, and has some sloppy errors such as incorrectly labelled screenshots. The program also uses imprecise language at times. The 'Save' options refer to saving text, when they actually allow you to save an entire page, complete with text and graphics.

It is sometimes hard to find a particular feature because it is not clearly described in the manual or within a program menu.

Despite these niggling faults, FineReader works well and its combination of accuracy and low price make it a strong rival for more well-known competitors such as OmniPage.

Price: £69.99 (inc. VAT)

Features:

Minimum requirements: Pentium 200MHz PC; Windows NT 4.0, 2000 or XP; 64MB Ram; 90MB hard disk space; TWAIN-compliant scanner.

Contact: Abbyy UK 01279 323 766
www.abbyy.com