Scanning:

Scanning converts hardcopy information into digital form.

• Our maximum scanning size is A0 for b/w plan scans 
  and A3 for colour originals.
  
• We have high quality colour & black & white scanning equipment.
  
• We can scan B&W pages in one pass at 3 images a second (A4size). Colour scan takes significantly longer.
  

Scanned documents are generally saved as RDO, TIFF, Jpg or PDF depending on the required end use;

a. We save black and white images as RDO (Xerox proprietary form of TIFF) where we want to retrieve the documents together with their job ticket for “Print on Demand”.

b. RDO is a very flexible format and can be enhanced by:

i. skewing,
ii. despeckling,
iii. cut and paste,
iv. combination with other images,
v. combining documents from other applications or scans.

c. PDFs are used to email information or preparatory to OCR (Optical Character Recognition). We generally get better results if we do the scans for OCR but if you want to do it remember that works best with 300 dpi images. Higher resolution will decrease the accuracy of the read.

d. Jpg is the preferred format for colour scans. These can then be enhanced or edited in “PhotoShop”.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

OCR is used to change scanned information from raster to text OCR is used to change scanned information from raster to text:

1. The text can be saved in say “Word” then edited, reformatted
a. fonts can be changed to match other pages in the document.
b. formats can be enhanced with consistent page numbers, headers and footers etc
c. new text, graphics & tables can be added.
2. The Word documents can also be emailed to other work groups
3. OCR can be used with languages other Characters than English, including Russian, Chinese etc.

Experience: Our efficient OCR software has recognised many hundreds of documents including the entire 1868 Maori Bible.