Caere Announces the Immediate Availability of OmniPage Pro 6.0 for Windows

New Version Features Improved Accuracy and Integration with Word
Processors

Caere Corporation (NASDAQ:CAER) announced the immediate availability of
OmniPage Pro 6.0 for Windows, a major new version of the world's number
one selling optical character recognition (OCR) software. OmniPage Pro 6.0
provides significant improvements in accuracy due to recognition
advancements including Caere's new and exclusive Quadratic Neural Network
and enhanced Language Analyst technologies. New page parsing technology
provides a higher level of intelligence for identifying regions of a
document image. These advancements reinforce Caere's position as the
industry leader with superior OCR technology. OmniPage Pro 6.0 provides
new Direct Input for integration with word processors and other text-based
applications. Further enhancements make the product simpler and easier to
use. 

Owners of any Caere OCR product (including all versions of OmniPage or
WordScan) are eligible to upgrade to OmniPage Pro 6.0 for $149 by
purchasing Caere's new upgrade package. The upgrade pricing represents a
$300 - $350 reduction in the street price of OmniPage Pro. Customers
eligible for the upgrade include users who purchased a Caere OCR product
by itself or bundled in most flatbed and edge-fed scanners, including
Hewlett-Packard ScanJet scanners. As a result of Caere's aggressive
seeding strategy, most scanner owners are eligible. The retail upgrades
are available at major resellers, including Egghead, CompUSA, Computer
City, and Best Buy. OmniPage Pro 6.0 is priced at $695 (MSRP) with an
expected street price of $499. 

Accuracy: Number One

Feedback from Caere customers is consistent with industry analysts who
agree that accuracy is the most important factor for OCR technology. "In a
recent survey of OCR users, 89% identified accuracy as the number one
requirement for OCR," said Kristy Holch, a leading analyst of the scanning
and OCR market at BIS Strategic Decisions in Norwell, MA. "Caere is the
OCR market leader and its advancements in OCR technology are upping the
ante on the demanding requirements of the growing OCR market." 

OmniPage Pro 6.0 features an improved core recognition engine with new and
enhanced technologies to continue its tradition of industry-leading OCR.
With OmniPage Pro 6.0, users will see an average reduction in errors of
26% over the previous version of OmniPage Pro on the broadest spectrum of
documents without sacrificing processing speed. 

Quadratic Neural Network: The most notable accuracy improvement in OmniPage
Pro 6.0 is Caere's exclusive Quadratic Neural Network (QNN) technology.
QNN achieves more accurate identification of all characters, but its
greatest contribution lies with similar-looking, ambiguous, or poorly
formed characters (mostly as a result of faxing, photocopying, or
low-resolution scans). 

QNN gains its accuracy improvements over other OCR engines by using a new
method to define the differences between various characters. Once the OCR
engine segments word images on the page into individual character images,
it plots dozens of properties of each character (including image and
contextual information) on a multi-dimensional map. Each alphanumeric
character has a region on this map that the OCR engine recognizes as that
particular character. The OCR engine assigns a value for each property of
the character image in question. The character image is then identified as
a specific alphanumeric character based on the region into which it falls.
Most OCR engines use straight lines to define these multi-dimensional
regions, but QNN more precisely defines the regions by using curvilinear
segments, resulting in higher recognition accuracy, especially on
hard-to-recognize, ambiguous, or degraded characters. 

By way of an analogy for QNN's accuracy improvement by using curved lines
instead of straight ones, consider the case of a population census for the
state of Missouri. If Missouri used only straight lines to define its
borders, a resident in St. Louis on the Mississippi River might be falsely
identified as being located in Illinois. However, curved lines more
clearly define state boundaries and therefore produce a more accurate
census. 

Language Analyst: To further increase accuracy, OmniPage Pro 6.0 also
includes improvements to its Language Analyst technology. Language Analyst
features a new algorithm for incorporating a variety of context-sensitive
techniques that employ linguistic information, trigram (three letter
sequences) analysis, and dictionaries to significantly improve OCR
recognition. The new algorithm in OmniPage Pro 6.0 improves Language
Analyst by using better weighting schemes and evaluation methods on each
of these techniques. 

Page Parser: OmniPage Pro 6.0 offers a new page parser, which more
accurately processes and analyzes document images before sending them to
the OCR engine for recognition. The new page parser provides a higher
level of intelligence to analyze page elements and more accurately
identify areas as text, graphics, or noise. It more precisely identifies
areas of text and better differentiates between tables and columns. The
new page parser results in higher accuracy and improved reading order of
complex documents.

Ease of Use

"OmniPage Pro 6.0 reflects our commitment to our customers who require not
only topnotch accuracy but also increased flexibility and throughput,"
said Chad Kinzelberg, vice president of marketing. "By meeting these needs
in OmniPage Pro 6.0 and offering $149 upgrades to most scanner owners,
Caere is driving the mainstream adoption of OCR."

Direct Input: OmniPage Pro 6.0 includes new Direct Input, which lets users
run OmniPage Pro from within most popular Windows word processors and
other text-based programs without having to switch between applications.
Direct Input adds a "Direct Input" option to the File menus of major
text-based Windows applications such as Word, WordPerfect, Ami Pro, Excel,
and 1-2-3. Using a DLL, Direct Input easily integrates OCR into these
applications for quick access and increased OCR throughput. 

AutoOCR Toolbar: OmniPage Pro 6.0 enhances the customizable AutoOCR Toolbar
(formerly the Dynamic Access Panel-), which guides the user through the
key steps in the OCR process: Scan/Load Image, Zone, and Recognize. For
the user who prefers automatic processing, the toolbar includes the Auto
Button that performs all the key steps automatically with a single mouse
click. During Direct Input, the new Output Button allows users to paste
converted text directly into the host application. As with any button on
the AutoOCR Toolbar, the Output Button setting is easily changeable with a
simple drop down menu so the output text can be pasted to the clipboard
instead. 

Scan Manager: OmniPage Pro 6.0 also includes new Scan Manager software that
configures scanner drivers through a simple dialog box for increased ease
of use and manageability. Scan Manager installs only the scanner drivers
that the user selects and shares those drivers among Caere applications,
saving disk space. Scan Manager eliminates the need to reconfigure the
same scanner for different Caere applications, like Image Assistant, the
full 24-bit image editor included in OmniPage Pro. 

True Page: OmniPage Pro 6.0 includes enhancements to True Page, the
page-format retention technology pioneered by Caere that maintains text
and graphics in their original page layout. Version 6.0 improves
OmniPage's ability to process tables and columns to more precisely
maintain a page's true format and also includes better recognition of
margins, tabs, indents, line spacing, and paragraph spacing. 

Scanner compatibility: OmniPage Pro 6.0 also includes support for 30
additional scanner models, including the HP ScanJet III series. OmniPage
Pro now supports over 100 edge-fed and flatbed, black and white,
grayscale, and color scanners. 

System Configuration

OmniPage Pro 6.0 requires a minimum of 12 MB free hard disk space, 8 MB
RAM, a 386-based or higher PC, Windows 3.1 or above, DOS 5.0 or above, a
Windows compatible pointing device, and a 3.5 inch high density floppy
disk drive. Image Assistant requires VGA or SVGA 256-color monitor.

Pricing and Availability

OmniPage Pro 6.0 is immediately available at all major resellers. It is
priced at $695 (MSRP). 

Current owners of any Caere OCR product (including all versions of OmniPage
or WordScan purchased by themselves or bundled with a scanner) are
eligible to upgrade to OmniPage Pro 6.0 for $149 by purchasing Caere's new
retail upgrade packages. The upgrade packages are available at major
resellers, including Egghead, CompUSA, Computer City, and Best Buy, or
directly from Caere. 

Users who purchased OmniPage Pro 5.0 after July 1, 1995, are entitled to a
free upgrade to OmniPage Pro 6.0 for only a nominal shipping and handling
fee. Also, all owners of OmniPage Pro 5.0 are eligible for a $79 upgrade
to Version 6.0. Caere can be reached at 1-800-535-7226 x110. 

The Company

Caere Corporation, with U.S. headquarters in Los Gatos, Calif. and European
headquarters, Caere GmbH, in Munich, Germany, is the leader in OCR
technology and desktop document management products. Caere has recently
expanded its line of OCR products as a result of the December 1994 merger
with Calera Recognition Systems. Caere's products include the OmniPage and
WordScan lines of OCR software that convert printed and faxed documents
into electronic text; the PageKeeper line of Windows document management
software that effortlessly retrieves a wide range of information from
virtually any source; OmniForm, which converts paper forms to electronic
format; the M/Series high-speed, high-volume OCR hardware and software for
commercial applications; and a broad array of OCR and bar code readers
that accelerate transaction processing. 

Caere Corp
100 Cooper Court
Los Gatos, CA 95030
408-395-7000,  fax 408-354-2743
 
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