Adjusting Area Shapes and Area Borders

Before recognition, the program analyzes and highlights different area types, such as: Text, Image, Table and Barcode. Different types of border areas are distinguished by different colors. ABBYY FineReader relies on this analysis to identify areas and the recognition order. This information helps recreate the original page formatting.

The highlighted area is active. Click an area to make it active. You can use the Tab key to navigate through the areas. Each area is numbered. These numbers determine the order of navigation. By default, the ordinal numbers of the areas are not displayed in the Image window — this feature is activated by selecting the area re-numbering function.

If the text of an area does not fit within its borders (this may happen, for example, if you edit the recognized text), the text outside the borders of a non-active area may not be visible on the screen. Red markers that appear on the borders of the area will alert you to this. Once an area becomes active, its borders will expand to fit the entire text to the screen.

The tools for marking and editing the areas manually can be found in the Image window and on the pop-up toolbars for the Text, Image, Background Picture, and Table areas (pop-up toolbars appear next to the active area).

Important! After you have finished adjusting the areas, re-launch the OCR process.

Select a tool from the Image window:
draws a Recognition area

draws a Text area

draws a Picture area

draws a Background Picture area

draws a Table area
Use the mouse to draw an area.

New areas can be drawn without selecting a tool from the Image window toolbar. You can simply draw an area on the image using one of the the following key combinations:

CTRL+SHIFT draws a Text area
ALT+SHIFT draws an Image area
CTRL+ALT draws a Table area
CTRL+SHIFT+ALT draws a Barcode area

You can change the area type. Right-click the selected area to choose Change Area Type from the shortcut menu, and then select the desired area type.

Place the mouse cursor on the area border.
Left-click and drag in the desired direction.
Release the mouse button when done.

Note: You can simultaneously adjust the vertical and horizontal borders of the area by placing the mouse pointer on a corner of the area.

Select the / tool on the pop-up toolbar for Text, Image or Background Picture areas.
Place the mouse cursor inside the area and select part of the image. This segment will be added to or deleted from the area.
Adjust the area border, if necessary.

Notes:

These tools may only be applied to Text, Image or Background Picture areas. You cannot add/delete a segment in a table or barcode area.
The area borders can also be adjusted by adding vertices (splitting points). The resulting segments can be dragged in any direction using the mouse. To add a new vertex, move the cursor to the desired point on the border while holding down CTRL+SHIFT (this switches the pointer to crosshairs) and click. A new vertex will appear on the area border.

Select Order Areas from the Areas menu.
Select the areas in the order desired for the output document.

Note: The areas are automatically numbered from left to right during automatic page analysis, regardless of the direction of the text on the image.

Select the tool and click the area you wish to delete.
Select the areas to delete and then click Delete Area from the shortcut menu.
Select the areas to delete and then press the DELETE key.

To delete all areas:

Select Delete All Areas and Text from the Image window shortcut menu.

Important! Deleting an area from an image that has already been recognized will delete all of the text in the corresponding Text window.

Select the desired text orientation from the drop-down Orientation menu on the Area Properties toolbar (the Area Properties shortcut menu).

For details, see Changing Text Properties.