If you discover IRIS OCR software on your computer, don't panic. It's not a virus, and if you don't need it, you can remove it without crashing your system. Optical character recognition software works with a scanner to generate digital files that can be searched for words or phrases. I.R.I.S. is a software company that specializes in OCR technology.
How OCR Does It
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Left to itself, a scanner converts a paper document into a bitmapped format. The human eye can read the text in a scanned image, but a computer is unable to recognize the text. An OCR program creates a computer-readable layer on top of the image when you make the scan. After that, the computer can search the text in the readable layer for specific words or phrases. If you don't scan documents much, OCR may be of no use to you, but it can be invaluable to anyone who frequently searches scanned paperwork for information.
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The I.R.I.S. Blooms
I.R.I.S. products include Readiris OCR software for individuals and Readiris Corporate for businesses. Readiris converts scanned documents to searchable formats that include PDFs, Word, Excel and HTML files. Readiris can scan more than 130 languages, including Arabic, Korean, Icelandic, Hungarian, Indonesian and Occitan. Other I.R.I.S. products include small hand-held document scanners, pen scanners and business card scanners.