Caere Announces the Immediate Availability of OmniPage Pro 6.0 for Windows; New Version Features Improved Accuracy and Integration with Word Processors.

LOS GATOS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 31, 1995--Caere Corporation (NASDAQ:CAER) today announced the immediate availability of OmniPage(R) 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 top-notch 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(R), 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). Users who purchase OmniPage Pro 6.0 between July 31st and the ship date of OmniPage Pro for Windows 95 (expected to be mid November 1995) are entitled to a free upgrade to the Windows 95 version within one month of shipment of OmniPage Pro for Windows 95.

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. -0-

Note to Editors: Trademark References: Caere, OmniPage, Image Assistant, PageKeeper, and WordScan are registered trademarks and Language Analyst, True Page, Direct Input, 3D OCR, AutoOCR Toolbar, OmniForm, and M/Series are trademarks of Caere Corporation. Other products named may be trademarks of their respective manufacturers and are hereby recognized.

CONTACT: Caere Corporation

Karen Melchior, 408/395-7000 ext. 2352 (product manager)

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Patrick Crisp, 408/395-7000 ext. 2049 (PR Manager)

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