Scanning & OCR
Frequently Asked Questions
Our society and businesses are becoming increasingly computer reliant, and rightly so. Computers make information retrieval and storage more economical and easier to use. Thus, many companies are now converting their old paper documents and files into electronic format, so that clients, customers, and employees can more easily use and find them. Also, electronic archival of documentation saves space and money, and is very dependable. Finally, the Internet makes electronic transmission of documents economical and easier than ever. Now is the time to convert your paper to computer based files!
We are located in the Cleveland, Ohio area. But we don't have an office open to the public. We do all of our business via mail or pickup. We accept jobs from all over the United States, and even all over the world. Because of our efficient operation, we can probably do the job for you cheaper than most local companies. Fill out our form for more information.
Because electronic documentation is more economical and useful. Once your old paper documents are converted to electronic format, you can save space, make unlimited copies, share with customers, clients, and employees, edit the document, publish it on the web, and convert the document to other useful formats, index it for searchable databases, etc. Whole file cabinets of paper can be stored on a few dozen CD ROMs or a single hard drive!
OCR stands for "Optical Character Recognition." When scanned, a page is converted into a graphics file. These files tend to be large, and can't be easily edited. If the file contains text, the text isn't recognized as such by other programs, such as word processors. Thus, the text is really embedded as a part of a picture. OCRing the graphics file converts the graphical text image into a format that computers recognize as letters and words. This means that word processors and editing programs can then recognize the text, and it can be edited, reformatted, cut and pasted, etc. The file sizes are also greatly reduced. This makes the resulting file much more useful. We recommend that all text-based documents undergo OCR to make them most useful.
The answer depends on what you want to use the scanned documents for. If you need the scanned version to look exactly like the original, but also be indexed for text searching, we recommend Adobe PDF format documents, with a graphical image and hidden text. They look exactly like the original, but can be indexed by a web server. All major browsers can display a PDF document (although sometimes requiring a plug-in be installed). Free PDF viewers are also available. PDF documents can be edited, added to, and made a part of other documents. In fact, PDF is used extensively on the web. The drawbacks are larger files and slower download times.
If the format does not need to exactly reflect the original, but needs to be pretty close, normal Adobe PDF format is sufficient. The files are quite compact, and they can be edited, expanded, etc. Download times are good.
If the format is less important than the file size or download times, the files can be converted into HTML or text format. These are small files quick to download, but there is little control over the "look and feel" of the document.
Finally, other formats are possible, such as spreadsheets, word processing formats, and others.
For more information on PDF formats, see the Adobe web site.
Documents where the format is very important should be scanned and converted into Adobe PDF format with a graphical image and hidden text. These documents look exactly like the original, but can be indexed and searched.
For more information on PDF formats, see the Adobe web site.
Editing, in the vast majority of cases, is not necessary. OCR packages are very accurate in recognizing letters and words, and miss (or misspell) only 1~8% of the words. However, if the page is filled with large amounts of shading or graphics, or if the quality of the page is poor or the font size too small, errors can increase dramatically, and some editing may be necessary if accurate results are desired. Any requirement for manual editing greatly increases the cost of the scanning and OCR operation.
Scanning costs can be reduced by getting the job done in large batches, by minimizing the number of separate files to be created (files handling costs money), by combining documents into larger documents, and by minimizing the amount of editing do be done. Also, files with large amounts of shading or graphics can often take longer to process, and may increase costs. Eliminating any editing of the final results can also greatly reduce costs.
File formats include text, PDF, Word, WordPerfect, TIFF, WMF, HTML, RTF, and others.
Files can be returned to you on CD ROM, Jaz, Zip, and Orb disks, via e-mail or by FTP, in Macintosh, Unix, or PC formats. Other formats may be available as well.
Fill out our Request Form, or e-mail us at the address below.