Product Delivers Next-Generation Technologies for Intelligent Reproduction of Multi-Page Document Formatting and Recognition of Digital Photographs

London, UK (Wednesday 23rd September, 2009) — ABBYY, a leading provider of document recognition, data capture and language software, today announced ABBYY FineReader 10, the newest version of the professional-level optical character recognition (OCR) application. Delivering the next generations of its two major technologies — ABBYY ADRT® (Adaptive Document Recognition Technology) for reproducing multi-page document formatting and Camera OCR, FineReader 10 takes OCR to new heights, driving it beyond traditional text recognition. In combination with its highly intuitive, task-oriented interface, the enhanced technologies bring greater efficiency, simplicity and performance to all scenarios of professional work with documents, for both consumer and business users.

ABBYY FineReader 10 delivers further enhancements in page layout retention, especially on documents with background images (e.g. magazine pages). The new version also provides up to 30 percent increase in text recognition accuracy for Asian languages (e.g. Chinese and Japanese) and up to 20 percent increase for European languages (e.g. English, French, German, Polish, etc.). In addition, it demonstrates up to 30 percent accuracy improvement on low print quality images such as digital photos and faxes and takes a significant step forward in delivering accurate results on photographs captured with mobile phone cameras. Providing superior accuracy in recognising various types of documents, FineReader allows users to considerably reduce manual operations while working with documents and facilitates the transition to a paperless environment.

“OCR is one of the key instruments to meet challenges related with document conversion and to build a bridge between paper and digital information,” explained Sergey Popov, director of FineReader Products Department at ABBYY. “Keeping pace with the real-world needs in the field of document and information management and exchange, ABBYY focuses the development of FineReader around three major points: core technology innovations, maximisation of user efficiency, and new possibilities for its practical application.”

•   Redefining OCR Technology with 2nd Generation ABBYY ADRT

ADRT is a unique and sophisticated part of ABBYY’s OCR technology, responsible for reproducing logical structure and formatting of multi-page documents. Featuring second-generation ABBYY ADRT, FineReader 10 can now accurately re-create the most complex document attributes — including newly-added support for table of contents and hierarchical heading structures and the enhanced reproduction of footnotes and styles.

Unlike traditional OCR technology, ADRT does not simply maintain the original look of multi-page documents but intelligently reproduces them as native, fully-formatted Microsoft® Office files, preserving logical links between formatting attributes and consistent text flow throughout all pages.

•   Increasing Accessibility of OCR — Recognition of Phone Camera Images

With its third-generation Camera OCR technology, FineReader 10 expands the users’ ability of acquiring images for recognition from scanners and standard digital cameras to mobile phone cameras. This makes the advantages of ABBYY OCR technology accessible for a broader audience than before and enables users to capture text and documents at any time and place and while on-the-go. A range of proven image pre-processing features, together with the new functions for correcting image 3D distortions, ISO noise and motion blur, ensure the best possible OCR accuracy on photographed images.
 
•   Maximizing Efficiency with Task-Oriented Document OCR

In addition to powerful technology enhancements, ABBYY FineReader 10 comes with an updated and highly optimised user interface focused on task-oriented document conversion. The new interface considerably reduces the amount of steps typically required to process a document, bringing more automation, ease-of-use and productivity to everyday work. All the key document conversion tasks are grouped into an intuitive Quick Tasks menu making the conversion of even the most complex documents into editable and searchable files as easy as clicking a button. 

•   Hands-On Innovation for E-book Readers with Enhanced HTML Export

Providing dramatically enhanced capability to convert images of documents into HTML, FineReader 10 simplifies reading and publishing of electronic books. With the ability to automatically save chapters of a large book as individual HTML files, and create a table of contents with hyperlinks to the respective chapters and files, readers can easily navigate the chapters without the need to scroll through a long file. FineReader 10 also supports saving of documents as native HTML layouts which can be easily edited, indexed for search, or readily published on a Web site.

ABBYY FineReader 10 is fully compatible with the Microsoft® Windows® 7 operating system, and offers a range of other new functions and technology enhancements intended to increase user efficiency when working with documents, such as:

•   Improved Page Layout Analysis and Retention — New FineReader delivers enhanced capability to analyse and accurately reproduce layout of document pages containing background image items with text areas upon them. It also offers considerably enhanced capability to accurately recognise graphs and charts. 

•   Enhanced PDF Compression — For more efficient document sharing and to save valuable storage space, ABBYY’s advanced MRC compression technology offers powerful capability to optimise the size of output PDFs, reducing it up to 10 times while preserving visual quality.

•   New Recognition Languages, Korean and Yiddish — ABBYY FineReader now reads documents in 186 languages, which is the broadest language base ever available for OCR, including multilingual documents with any combination of supported languages.

•   Enhanced Export to PDF/A format — Offers four options for saving documents in PDF/A format: “text-under-image”, “text-over-image”, “text and image”, and “image only”.

Availability
ABBYY FineReader 10 will be available in three editions (Professional, Corporate and Site License Editions) designed to meet the needs of different user groups and various throughput requirements.  FineReader 10 Professional is priced at £98.99 incl VAT.  For more information about ABBYY FineReader 10, please visit: http://finereader.abbyy.com.