Capturing/converting digital text pics to workable files

[Large Bits]

Hi,

I need to convert captured stills of text, i.e. a digital shot of a web page or information poster, into something that can be searched or used in a file like word, via textbridge or similar.

If i had a paper copy i would scan it in, run through textbridge or whatever and output it to Microsoft Word. However, I have no hard copy and want to know if there is a way that multiple digitised captured screenshots can be converted from the jpeg (or whatever format) image, directly into a character recognition program and then into word or wordpad.

I'm trying to build up a database (so maybe there is something that will link into a dbase prog?) from information i have filmed with my digicam and then captured a still of. The database will have to be searchable (else it's not much use). I'm all set up with firewire, etc, it's just the above i'd like advice on.

Hopeful thanks in advance,

Mark

[Greg12]

you need to scan the file in a special mode.

god i used to know all this. is it ocb.

then you can work with it.

[KingJohn]

Hi

Quite a lot of flat bed scanners come with a character recognition programs. I have a HP Scanner and can scan a picture directly into word,text or rich format. Its 95% accurate on a good source, sometimes the layout is a bit off.

Just before hitting the scan you chose the format, Jpg Text etc.

[Large Bits]

Thanks, but I don't have a hard copy, as I said, I want to capture video stills into workable files.

I could print out each and every screen grab that I need, but there would be literally thousands to then scan back in so that Textbridge could convert it with OCR.

I need to be able to run the still image through an OCR directly into Word, etc, without using a scanner. When I run a jpeg through textbridge pro, it just says it must be a grayscale file and picks nothing up, even though you can clearly read the writing on the pic. It's not able to recognise and work with the jpeg to provide a word compatible text output.

Maybe nothing is out there yet, so if not, invent it and I will buy it from you : )

Thanks for your help,

M

[KingJohn]

Do a search for OCR, I found this;

http://www.primerecognition.com/augprime/ocr_tech_spec.htm

Image Input
PrimeOCR will read images from either file or memory in the following formats:

PCX
PDA
Tiff(single or multi-page) all compression types except LZW.
Color or grayscale images