How The OCR Engine Is Configured

Global Capture uses the ABBYY Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Engine to read and classify documents. ABBYY is a very flexible and highly configurable OCR Engine and has configuration options that can be tweaked to help get the best possible results. This is a brief overview of what configuration files are used, and what the parameters in those files, do.

GlobalCapture Settings

The engine uses two primary configuration files, located in several locations; the TextOCR.cfg and the FullPageOCR.cfg. TextOCR.cfg is used to extract data from a page, whereas FullPageOCR.cfg uses the same parameters to convert and create text-searchable PDF files. For GlobalCapture, the FullPageOCR.cfg and the TextOCR.cfg files are in new locations. The parameters are still the same from previous versions.

Template Designer

• TextOCR.cfg: C:\inetpub\wwwroot\Square9Viewer

GlobalCapture Engine

• TextOCR.cfg: C:\GetSmart\CaptureServices\GlobalCapture_1

• FullPageOCR.cfg: C:\GetSmart\CaptureServices\GlobalCapture_1
  
  

Additionally you can configure individual GlobalCapture workflows to use different TextOCR settings by placing a file named after the workflow in the GlobalCapture Engine directory;

GlobalCapture Engine per Workflow TextOCR:

• WORKFLOWNAME.cfg: C:\GetSmart\CaptureServices\GlobalCapture_1

Please Be Advised

If the TextOCR.cfg files are different between the Template Designer and the GlobalCapture engine, the Template will read differently from what the engine will return. 

Changes to the TextOCR.cfg for Template Designer won't be reflected on existing samples. Only new ones. Upload a new sample to your template for the changes to take effect. 

Full Page OCR and Zonal Settings

We use the Abbyy Engine for Full Page and Text-based OCR. Abbyy is an extremely configurable engine which contains many settings that impact how the data is read. These configuration files are stored in 3 locations within the GetSmart directory:

• FullPageOCR.cfg – TextPDF/Full Page OCR Configuration settings.

  • These settings are used when converting a document to a text searchable PDF or other electronic formats.

• TextOCR.cfg

  • These settings are used when extracting data use Zonal OCR.

• FullPageBaseSettings.cfg

  • These settings contain a profile of commonly used settings present in version 4.1, which are customized further by FullPageOCR.cfg.
    
    

Please Be Advised

Changes to the default settings of these configuration files have not been tested by Square 9 and are modified at your own risk. Any changes you make to your OCR config files will require you to upload new sample documents and run scanning tests to see if you have better OCR results. Generally speaking, you can ask advisement of a Square 9 Technician but you would be encouraged to test on your own. As testing out new OCR configurations can take many hours. Keep in mind that changes to these files are global and will effect all incoming documents.

Configuration Objects

Both Files, TextOCR.cfg and FullPageOCR.cfg have similar configurations when GlobalSearch desktop client is installed. Each configuration files consists of one or many objects. In each object, there are a number of properties that can be defined, these objects are as follows and are found in the FullPageOCR.cfg and TextOCR.cfg files:

• PDFExportParams

• PagePreprocessingParams

• PageAnalysisParams

• ObjectsExtractionParams

• RecognizerParams

• DocumentStructureDetectionParams

Please Be Advised

These changes are global, changing these will affect all zonal OCR and text PDF activities

FullPageBaseSettings.cfg and ZonalBaseSettings.cfg Settings

FullPageBaseSettings.cfg contains a single string which defines the profile loaded when TextPDF creation is run. It’s values are outlined below:

• DocumentConversion_Accuracy

  • (Ex: RTF, DOCX) Suitable for converting documents to an editable format. Settings have been optimized for accuracy

• DocumentConversion_Speed

  • Suitable for converting documents to an editable format. Settings have been optimized for speed

• DocumentArchiving_Accuracy

  • Suitable for creating an electronic archive (PDF, PDF/A etc.) The settings have been optimized for processing speed. (Skew correction is not performed)

• TextExtraction_Accuracy

  • Used to extract zonal field data, optimized for accuracy

• TextExtraction_Speed

  • Used to extract zonal field data, optimized for speed at a loss of accuracy

• FieldLevelRecongnition

  • For recognizing short text fragments

• HighCompressedImageOnlyPDF

  • For creating high-compressed PDF files which the entire document is saved as pictures

• BusinessCardsProcessing

  • For recognizing business cards

• EngineeringDrawingsProcessing

  • Optimizes the OCR engine for recognizing technical drawings with text oriented in different directions

FullPageOCR.cfg and TextOCR.cfg Settings

Default Contents

As version 4.1, the default contents of the FullPageOCR.cfg and TextOCR.cfg are as follows. These documents can be found in C:\GetSmart. By changing these two documents, you can effect how the Zonal Templates read document data.

PDFExportsParams

This object defines how PDFs are exported after undergoing TextPDF Creation.

PagePreprocessingParams

PrepareImageMode

PageAnalysisParams

ObjectsExtractionParams

RecognizerParams

RecognizerParams

If neither FastMode or BalancedMode are used, FullMode will be used by default. Text will extract with greater accuracy but may be significantly slower

DocumentStructureDetectionParams

The default values for these parameters are set to TRUE. GlobalSearch does not require these parameters, and for quickest extraction these values should be set to FALSE

Text Parameters

TextLanguage Value Table

TextType Value Table

• You can select multiple text types by adding the values together.

• Both TextLanguage and TextType would be added to the RecongnizerParams

Square 9 Default OCR Settings & Tested High Performance Settings

In the event your TextOCR or FullPageOCR configuration files are lost or corrupted, you can construct a new one using the settings directly below. Additionally, Square 9 offers a Aggressive OCR set of parameters in the second code box below. This will increase processing time but also increase OCR accuracy. The third code box includes a "High Performance" setting that is an excellent compromise between speed and accuracy, at the expense of conversion in color. This set of parameters also excels at reading sub-optimal text, so if your text is coming in from a low quality source (Such as an old dotMatrix printer) these settings may be a good option. The second and third configs should not be used on burdened or slower servers. Modification to one configuration file should be done to all configuration files to maintain parity and consistency.

Original OCR Settings

[PDFExportParams]
PDFAComplianceMode=PCM_Pdfa_1b
TextExportMode=PEM_ImageOnText
Colority=PCM_KeepColority

[PagePreprocessingParams]
CorrectOrientation = true

[PrepareImageMode]
CorrectSkew = false

[PageAnalysisParams]
ProhibitModelAnalysis=true

[ObjectsExtractionParams]
FastObjectsExtraction=true

[RecognizerParams]
FastMode=true

[DocumentStructureDetectionParams]
ClassifySeparators=false
DetectFootnotes=false
DetectTableOfContents=false

Aggressive OCR Settings (Square 9 Tested)

[PDFExportParams]
PDFAComplianceMode=PCM_Pdfa_1b
TextExportMode=PEM_ImageOnText
Colority=PCM_KeepColority

[PagePreprocessingParams]
CorrectOrientation = true

[PrepareImageMode]
CorrectSkew = true

[PageAnalysisParams]
ProhibitModelAnalysis=false
EnableTextExtractionMode=true

[ObjectsExtractionParams]
FastObjectsExtraction=false
EnableAggressiveTextExtraction=true

[RecognizerParams] 
FastMode=false

[DocumentStructureDetectionParams]
ClassifySeparators=false
DetectFootnotes=false
DetectTableOfContents=false

High Performance OCR Settings (Square 9 Tested)

[PDFExportParams]
PDFAComplianceMode=PCM_Pdfa_1b
TextExportMode=PEM_ImageOnText
Colority=PCM_KeepColority

[PagePreprocessingParams] 
CorrectOrientation = true 

[PrepareImageMode]
CorrectSkew = true
DiscardColorImage = true
PhotoProcessingMode = PPM_TreatAsPhoto
ImageCompression = IC_NoCompression

[PageAnalysisParams]
ProhibitModelAnalysis=false
EnableTextExtractionMode=false
DetectTables=false

[ObjectsExtractionParams]
FastObjectsExtraction=false
DetectTextOnPictures=true
EnableAggressiveTextExtraction=true
DetectPorousText = true
RemoveGarbage = true
RemoveTexture = true

[RecognizerParams]
FastMode=false
LowResolutionMode = true
TextTypes = 487

[DocumentStructureDetectionParams]
ClassifySeparators=false
DetectFootnotes=false
DetectTableOfContents=false

Configuring Full Page OCR PDF Export Format

In some cases you may have the need to define a new PDF standard for PDFs converted to text searchable to export as.  To do so, modify FullPageOCR.cfg and alter the setting "PDFAComplianceMode" under the "PDFExportParams" to one of the available values outlined below.

• PCM_Pdfa_1a

• PCM_Pdfa_1b

• PCM_Pdfa_2a

• PCM_Pdfa_2u

Note: By default, Square 9's OCR engine uses PDF/A Standard 1B.