Document Scanning Imaging

Document Scanning Imaging.

The imaging process and output depends will depend on your requirements and documents.

Deciding on the right imaging format is a decision only the user can make.

There are 2 main areas to decide on
- DPI
- Colour Setting

DPI - Dots per inch indicates the resolution of images. The more dots per inch, the higher the resolution. The higher the quality.
Why not use the highest possible DPI then?. Answer File size, Speed and Image size.
The higher the DPI the lasrger the file size. Scanning one or two images on a high DPI may not be a problem but scan a few thousand and you will find the images are so large the are difficult to move or archive.

DPI also affectes the speed of the scanner. The higher the DPI the slower the scanning process. Agins for afew documents this may not be an issue but for many thousand the lost seconds all add up.

Finally Image size - by this we mean the viewable onscreen image. Opening an image on screen with a 600DPI at 100% you will find its is so large even on a 19" monitor you are only viewing one corner of the image, moving the image around on the screen to view different parts becomes cumbersum. Zooming out to get the image to fit the screen means the imaging is zoomed out so far out you can no longer read the image clearly.

The typical DPI setting is 200 or 300 DPI this setting creates managable and good quality images; Of course this is only a guide and by no means always the case 150DPI may be more than adequate or 400 DPI for those special images.
400DPI is the maximum you will ever go to for Document Scanning.



Color Setting


Selecting either B&W, Greyscale, Color all depend on the document type and your requirements. Color is obvious, deciding on black dn white or greyscale depnds on the image content. Making this decision can be a trial and error. If you ahev illustrations i.e. different shades of black that you would like to capture then Greyscale is the choice, this provides the variations needed. If the document is simply text i.e. one shade of black the standard black and white setting should fit the purpose.
In addition to this setting Brightness and Contrast play an important part when selecting a document type. Border removal, Text enhancement and many other features all add to the options for producing that perfect image.

There is no default rule for these settings all must be determined by the user depending on document type.

File Formats:

Each with their own advantages and disadvantages.
Tiffs, jpegs, gifs, pdfs…

Are just a few of the main output formats.