TOCR Viewer Pro (formerly Transym OCR)

Optical character recognition (OCR) is a neat technology that allows converting physical documents into digital copies. Simply scan a typewritten file, run it through an OCR program and have it turned into its digital counterpart.

Among the alternatives on the market there is TOCR Viewer, a simple application that does not provide complicated settings in order to achieve a good result.

Installing the product is a simple job that can be completed by any type of user, regardless of their computer knowledge. Also, during the process there is no offer to add third-party software to the system.

Looks are plain and simple and, although some may argue about the intuitiveness of the interface, it is easy to use, with options and functions placed in visible spots.

TOCR Viewer can import images from a connected scanning device or it can load them from a local path. Either way, once a document is loaded you can start selecting the area you want to be converted.

The selection is adjustable and there are options for fitting the document better into the page by rotating or flipping it.

The actual processing of the data is quite fast and during our tests the program managed to come up with impressive results. Of course, the input has to have the text as clear as possible.

For improved results there are some settings that can be adjusted; these can help with removing the noise in the image, eliminating lines or shading as well as choose the characters that should be recognized.

TOCR Viewer is quite simple to handle and if the processed image is clean of artefacts and other elements that might hinder the character recognition it can do a pretty good job. It is not the most accurate tool in its category, though.