I'm supposed to have OCR software installed. How do I access it?

[wchmara]

The only help I get on the I.R.I.S webpage is "Open your HP software..."

Which HP software do I open to access the ocr program?

I've clicked every HP icon on my desktop, none of it lets me get to the ocr software.

[ronaldhunziker]

did anyone ever answer this question for you? I have the same question.

[Artiz]

Click the HP Solution Center shortcut on the deskop or select it from within the Start button should lead you to the scanning interface. A list of functions shows up, starting from Scan Picture, Scan Document, ..., Convert to Text. The last one is for ocr.

[wchmara]

No such icon exists on my desktop.

I gave up on getting any help on this long ago, and just installed FreeOCR. Which works great, btw.

[Artiz]

Glad to hear you found a solution to your problem. I may try out just for fun.

I am new to ocr HP too.  After finding no help from reading some googled links, I improvised the simple fix. It does a good job with 300 dpi images and handles them as a bundle quickly.  Mind you, the scan process is now slower than at the default 200 dpi. However, The ocr utility can handle accents remarkably well, which surprised me. It is time-saving and really worth trying. It also seems to be able to ocr format if the output file is set to RTF.

The HP solution center should be in the following location: C:\Program Files\HP\Digital Imaging\bin\hpqdirec.exe. You can click from there. If not there, the installation could be the problem.
  

[Artiz]

Have installed FreeOCR and tried it. It can do ocr for 200 dpi images quite well, something the HP utility can't do.  A user can zone text areas to guide ocr, also something HP can't do. This avoids gibberish typical in the absence of zoning. The side by side image/text layout makes it easy to compare and edit ocr text. However, it is English only, unable to recognize most accents. It does ocr page by page; can't bundle multiple pages in a file or from several files. All formating information is lost as it output only txt. In all, if you have only a small job and have to go with low resolution, it can be really handy.