Explain OCR And OMR

OCR

• Short for Optical Character Recognition or Optical Character Reader.
• OCR is the process where images of letters can be entered into the computer as data using a scanner or other hardware device. 
• OCR is far from perfect, but is currently the best method of digitizing typed pages of text. 
• Some computer fax applications also use OCR to transform incoming faxes from graphics files into word processing documents.
• Some examples of how an OCR may be used would be a company that has hard copies of manuals or other company information and wanting to convert them into data that can be accessed and stored. 
• Another example is companies and libraries taking copies of books, magazines, or other old printed material and using an OCR to scan it into computers.

OMR

• Short for Optical Mark Reading or Optical Mark Readers, OMR is a system that gathers information by using a hardware device that detects a reflection or an absence of reflection from a card or piece of paper. 
• OMR enables the processing of hundreds or thousands of documents every hour automatically.
• OMR processing is popular for tests, where students receive a special card containing several empty circles and a packet that contains the questions and possible answers to each of the questions. 
• The student must complete the test by using a pencil to fill in each blank circle with what he or she believes is the correct answer. 
• For example, if the answer is "B", the student would have to fill in the "B Circle" in order to get the answer correct.
• Once the card or form has been completed a user would feed the cards into a system that grades or gathers information from the card. 
• An example of an OMR system is the Scanmark 5500 from Scantron, a system that is capable of processing 5,500 documents every hour.