The Imaging Process

The scanner takes digital 'snapshots' of your paper and converts them into bi-tonal image files, normally at 300 dpi, which can be viewed, printed or archived.

Once 'captured', your images can also be manipulated in various ways, including conversion to another graphic format (GIF, JPG, BMP, PDF, etc.), unique file-naming for archiving, or run through an OCR application for text translation.

Options include checking for clarity, skewing and other anomalies, manual 'scrubbing' to filter out stray marks and smudges, and erasure of unwanted lines, marks, etc.

Your images can then be burned to CD or transmitted to you via FTP.

Speed Scanning

Using a high-speed duplex scanner, thousands of single or double sided pages can be scanned in a matter of hours, using an ADF (Automatic Document Feeder).

Successful ADF feed requires the removal of all staples, and a degree of uniformity in the documents.

Similar to photocopying, any document that is frayed, dirty, torn, contains staples, etc. will jam, requiring manual or flat bed scanning.

Document preparation is not a requirement for submission. However, prepping the documents yourself will save you money. If you are too pressed for time, we will be happy to do it for you.

Manual Scanning

Many documents – for various reasons – cannot be fed through an ADF for high-speed scanning. For these documents, manual scanning is used.

Frail documents, bound books and sensitive documents which need to be checked for clarity as they are scanned, fall into this category.

Bound books can be speed scanned if you are willing to let us cut the binding on your books. Otherwise, manual scanning must be used.

Grayscale and Color Imaging

At Southwest Data, we use color and grayscale imaging to enhance the appearance of the graphics in text conversion files, especially PDF, using a flat bed scanner.

Normal B&W scanning at 200 to 400 dpi produces clear text images but photos and color images experience some lossiness.

To correct this, the documents can be separately scanned on a color flat bed, and the graphic images cropped out and inserted into the converted text files, replacing the original B&W graphics.

The difference in appearance is often dramatic, and critical to a successful conversion.

Image Cleanup

Ordinarily, images are scanned WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).

Some image filtering is possible during scanning, such as elimination of background 'noise', and despeckling.

With the exception of batch cropping, stray marks, smudges, spills, staple outlines, spots and other unsightly damage to your documents can only be removed through manual erasure. This is optional.

Manual erasure and cleanup is obviously a time-consuming process that can increase the overall cost of a project. For that reason, it is often ignored where high volumes of documents are involved.

Image Retrieval

When imaging is used for archival purposes, a method of identifying files for retrieval is often needed.

Without the use of proprietary software, image retrieval can be facilitated with directory grouping and file naming, and descriptive listings generated as tables or spreadsheets.

Multi-page TIF images can also be created.

With PDF conversion, there is the added benefit of hyperlinking, bookmarking, indexing and thumbnail previewing which is highly desirable for locating individual pages.

Proprietary image storage and retrieval software is available upon request.