The OCR tool exists 3+ times. Which one to use? [Paperless Office]

[patrickm]

OCR has been implemented in multiple tools with slightly different options. I've had also different OCR results using them.
So my questions is which one to use?

image.png

image1.png

image2.png

Also do you have plans to just have a single OCR tool that can be added to multiple workflows to make it simpler?

Thanks,
Patrick

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, patrickm

The tool in your first screenshot is the "image to PDF" tool, and it is designed to take image input files, and convert them into a PDF, the OCR function is offered here because image formats generally do not contain base content text to be converted, and you may wish to generate it when performing this action.

The second screenshot you shared is our "Enhance scanned pages" tool. That tool is designed for touching up documents which have been scanned, and offers the OCR function as a follow up to that process. Much like with the "image to PDF" function, this is entirely optional, and does not need to be activated unless you wish to shorten the number of "steps" being performed.

The third screenshot you provided is simply the OCR tool, this can be used in both of the above cases, if you choose not to run OCR during the previous steps, or it can be run entirely on its own with a series of input documents.

There is no hard "you should always use this one in this case" rule, but the reason we offer all of these different options is because these tools are mirrored across multiple products. While tools offers extensive customization that allows you to simply "add" the OCR function to the tool you are running, regardless of these settings, the "Editor" does not, and so users there would need to go through multiple steps to do this on documents of their own. In short, there simply is no reason to remove these functions in the PDF-Tools application, so they are still present.

Kind regards,

[patrickm]

Got it the GUI that comes up is actually used in the GUI products like the Editor so it comes with more options... ie the GUI isn't made only for the PDF Tools... But underneath they use the same engine. Thanks for the explanation that makes sense

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]