Selecting a User Pattern

ABBYY FineReader allows you to use patterns to improve OCR quality.

  1. On the Tools menu, click Pattern Editor….
  2. In the Pattern Editor dialog box, select the desired pattern from the list of available patterns and click Set Active.

Some important points to remember:

  1. Rather than differentiating between some similar yet different characters, ABBYY FineReader recognizes them as one and the same character. For example, the straight ('), left (‘), and right (’) quotes will be stored in a pattern as a single character (straight quote). This means that left and right quotes will never be used in the recognized text, even if you try to train them.
  2. For some character images, ABBYY FineReader will select the corresponding keyboard character based on the surrounding context. For example, an image of a small circle will be recognized as the letter O if there are letters immediately next to it and as the number 0 if there are digits next to it.
  3. A pattern can only be used for documents that have the same font, font size, and resolution as the document used to create the pattern.

  4. To be able to use a pattern later, save it to a file. See Working with a FineReader Document for details.

  5. To recognize texts set in a different font, be sure to disable the user pattern by selecting the Use only built-in patterns option in Tools>Options…>Read.