CVISION's PdfCompressor: Squeeze your PDFs, and more

By Duff Johnson

About the Author   Duff Johnson CEO of Appligent Document Solutions, Duff Johnson founded Document Solutions, Inc. in 1996 to deliver PDF technology services solutions for...  More   RELATED ARTICLES Planet PDF Resource Centers: Home Introducing Planet PDF's Learning Centers Acrobat 7 Product Family Feature Matrix Planet PDF & PDF Forum RSS Feeds Acrobat Developer Workshops in Europe to feature Acrobat 7

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Introduction

All OCR software vendors make more or less equivalent-sounding claims about accuracy, so many consumers struggle with the question of which OCR software to buy. In fact, most current-generation OCR delivers similar-enough results that real-world accuracy is generally affected more by the input image than the OCR engine itself.

First and foremost, it must be said, you should spend time optimizing both scanner and scans before sweating accuracy differences between the various current OCR packages. When turning attention to the software, however, be aware that you're not just buying accurate OCR, you're buying into a methodology for capturing images into documents. And here, some interesting choices do stand out.

For six years, CVISION Technologies has set themselves the goal of being the go-to company to solve the common problem of bloated PDF, especially PDFs from scanned documents. CVISION originally aimed their PdfCompressor product directly at medium and high-volume scanning operations, promising a powerful yet simple and reliable tool for producing slim PDF files, right from scanner output folders.

Now in version 3.1, PdfCompressor delivers as promised, and goes well beyond shrinking oversize PDF files. Version 3.1 includes OCR, the ability to process existing PDFs as well as scans, combine files, add stamps, headers and footers and Bates numbering, PDF preference settings, security options and more. New cover-page and validation modules add significant workflow options. An extensive command-line interface provides almost unlimited flexibility. For many business applications, this tool offers one-stop shopping for many of the most common PDF creation and management tasks. The name doesn't begin to say it all.

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