The other day I posted a response to a reader question about whether OCR is available on the iPad. Finis Price of iPadEsq commented on that post and mentioned a couple apps for the iPhone that can do OCR.
The OCR function I want is the ability to process an existing PDF image file into a PDF with embedded text and the original document image in the same file. This is what you get when you OCR a file using a desktop app like Adobe Professional or PDFPen. I think this is what most lawyers want when they think of OCR. This functionality is not built into any of the major PDF annotation app’s like PDF Expert or GoodReader.
The only app I am (now) aware of that does this is DocScanner. Whiled there are other apps that will extract text into a file separate from the PDF, I don’t think this is what lawyers are looking for. DocScanner will OCR a document image and output a PDF file with embedded text. DocScanner can not process an existing PDF file. Great when you want to OCR a hard copy but not so helpful if all you have is an existing PDF on your iPad. Hopefully they will add the ability to process PDF files in an update. I’d really like to see one of the major PDF annotation apps include this functionality.
Thanks to Finis for the tip!