Review: Nuance OmniPage Professional 18

Version 18 of Nuance's OmniPage Professional (OP18) document scanning and optical character recognition (OCR) package boasts better performance across the board. It can now connect directly to the user's cloud services sites and open and save files straight into these public cloud storage areas.

However, OP18 supports only current Windows business operating systems: Windows XP, 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vista and Windows 7.

Install
The install took about 17 minutes on our Core 2 Duo test laptop, with five applications being installed and placed on the desktop. These were the actual OmniPage Professional application itself, an OmniPage Agent, an OmniPage Batch Manager, Nuance Cloud Connector and PDF Create Assistant.

The OmniPage Batch Manager allows users to set up or use an existing workflow to automate tasks, such as taking PDF files from specific locations, scanning them and saving the results in Microsoft Excel or Word files. The OmniPage Agent is the process that runs this process.

The PDF Create Assistant is a tool allowing users to create PDFs from a variety of files produced by applications. Users can create a .pdf document for each file or combine the files to give a single .pdf.

OP18's Nuance Cloud Connector creates a virtual drive on the system, which can receive document data from or send processed results to that storage area when it is pointed to a specific cloud service.

We normally check program release notes as well, and were surprised to find that OP18 fired up a web page with release notes for version 17 of OP Pro. We also couldn't find a proper user manual for OP18 Pro, although we did glean some knowledge from an OmniPage 17 .pdf manual.

New features
The major new additions in OP18 Pro is the ISIS-based scanner support, adding cloud storage capabilities through the Nuance Cloud Connector, and improving OCR performance, document scanning, document compression and PDF search capabilities.

Usability has also improved. Non-expert users will no longer open up the program and not know what to do next as a guidance pop-up is now provided, giving options to open or scan documents.

There’s also automatic language detection when OP18 is processing pages that might be using different languages, so users don't need to constantly change the OCR function to recognise different languages.

Scanner configuration
After the software install, we detected the scanner we would use to scan documents. OP18 does this automatically, after which it runs a series of checks via a wizard, testing colour, grayscale and black-and-white document text scanning, in order to set up the scanner for optimal performance with OP18 [see picture].

OP18 can handle Image and Scanner Interface Specification (ISIS), Technology Without An Interesting Name (TWAIN) and Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)-based scanners.

We did have a problem with setting up the Kodak i1220 scanner, but this was due to an outdated driver, and the issue disappeared when the driver was updated.

In use
We set up OP18 on our Labs Dell OptiPlex 980 desktop system and a Labs Core 2 Duo laptop, connecting HP Photosmart Wireless B109n-z and Kodak i1220 scanners for this review.

The first thing users notice when OP18 Pro is fired up is the new start page, to guide inexperienced users new to document scanning and OCR [see picture].

OP18 Pro loads documents from three sources: files, scanned documents or from digital capture devices like cameras.

We found it simple to scan documents after configuring OP18 Pro. It takes a single click to scan colour, black-and-white or grayscale images or load files from local storage or through the Nuance Cloud Connector [see picture].

If you don’t currently use any cloud services, the Cloud Connector defaults to local storage, or any network storage to which you're connected.

After scanning documents, users can opt to perform OCR, and OP18 Pro will prompt you to correct any text that isn't recognised [see picture].

After OCR is completed, documents can be exported to the clipboard, to local or online storage, or straight into Excel or Word documents.

Enhancements to image pre-processing with new despeckling algorithms added to remove dots and speckles from images are also new to OP18. Users can choose between half-tone, normal and salt & pepper methods to despeckle page images.

OP18 now allows digital camera-captured whiteboard content to be image-enhanced for better readability, and pages with punch holes and margins can be processed to produce clean page borders.

Batch Manager and Workflows
OP18 can also be run using a batch manager to create automated jobs. For example, firms may require OP18 to watch specific folders for invoices, which are picked out and scanned automatically [see picture].

The results of the scan can be automatically inserted into an Excel spreadsheet for further processing.

Conclusions
OmniPage Professional 18 can save lots of time for firms by doing a hefty amount of document scanning. It was easy to install, and we didn't have many problems throughout the review, although it did take some time to set up scanners to work correctly with OmniPage.