Zones, backgrounds and auto-zoning
Zones and background values on a page image determine how page elements should be processed (treated as text, tables or graphics), and which part of a page should be auto-zoned.
Zones define areas enclosed by borders drawn over a page image which has a background value: process or ignore. There are text, table, graphic and also process and ignore zones.
If you draw zones manually you can decide which type to draw.
You draw text zones with 
, vertical left-rotated text zones with 
, vertical right-rotated text zones with 
, vertical Asian text zones with 
, table zones with 
and graphic zones with 
from the Image toolbar.
Image parts with manually drawn text, table or graphic zones will never be auto-zoned.
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In OmniPage Professional, select |
to draw form zones to define areas where form elements should be detected using LFR technology. Auto-zoning will not detect forms.
With process and ignore zones and backgrounds you can determine which image parts will be auto-zoned.
Process areas (process zones or process backgrounds) are auto-zoned when they are sent to recognition. They will be replaced by one or more text, table or graphic zones during recognition.
Ignore areas (ignore zones or ignore backgrounds) are dropped from processing. No text is recognized and no image is transferred.
Let’s see how auto-zoning works:
Auto-zoning allows the program to detect blocks of text, headings, tables, pictures and other elements on a page and draw zones to enclose them. It assigns text, table and graphic zone types to all zones and alphanumeric or numeric zone contents to text and table zones.
Auto-zoning runs on whole pages when you do automatic processing (unless you have a template loaded). Your layout description influences the auto-zoning process.
You can also specify auto-zoning when doing manual processing, as follows:
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auto-zone a whole page. The page must not contain any zones.
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auto-zone a part of a page. The page part should be enclosed in a process zone.
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auto-zone a page background. The page background should be set as a process background.
To auto-zone a whole page
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Acquire a page. It appears with a process background.
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Check in the Layout Description drop-down list that a zone template is not loaded.
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Click the Perform OCR button.
After recognition the page will return with zones round all elements found on the page and with the background changed to ignore.
Images sent to recognition without zones will always be auto-zoned.
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You can send several zone-less pages to have them auto-zoned and recognized together. Select the pages and click the Perform OCR button.
To auto-zone a part of a page
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Acquire a page. It appears with a process background.
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Draw a zone. The background changes to ignore after the first zone is drawn manually.
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Draw text, table or graphic zones on the ignore background to enclose areas you want manually zoned.
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Draw process zones on the ignore background to enclose areas you want auto-zoned.
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Click the Perform OCR button.
After recognition, the process zones will be replaced with one or more text, table or graphic zones.
Automatically drawn zones have solid borders, manually drawn zones have dotted borders.
To auto-zone a page background
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Acquire a page and draw zones manually as described above in steps 1-3.
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Click the Process background tool
in the Image toolbar to set a process background.
After recognition, the page will return with automatically generated text, table or graphic zones round all elements found on the process background outside the manually drawn zones. The returned page has an ignore background after processing.
You can draw ignore zones with the Draw ignore zone tool 
on a process background over parts of the page you want to exclude from recognition.
Auto-zoning and vertical texts
Auto-zoning is recommended for Asian language recognition, it can automatically detect text direction. However, manual zoning is possible.
Auto-zoning can also in many cases detect vertical texts in non-Asian languages. See Auto-zoning for vertical texts. Vertical texts in table cells can only be detected automatically. Vertical texts in other cases can be zoned manually.
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