SELECTING THE OPTIONS

Before scanning paper documents or opening image files, you can determine several image enhancement options. When selected, these options will be applied during the opening and scanning of documents.

Operation

•  Click the Options button on the main toolbar to select several image enhancement options.

 o  Click Page Deskewing to straighten pages scanned at an angle.

If you forgot to enable this option, click the Deskew Page icon on the image toolbar or click the corresponding command on the Process menu. The image will be straightened and the page analysis will be re-executed.

o  Click Detect Page Orientation to rotate pages automatically to the correct orientation.

Note that these two options slow down the scanning process somewhat. Only select them when necessary.

o  Click Despeckling and move the slider to indicate the size of the dots you want to remove from the binarized images.

The above-mentioned options are also available on the Settings menu.

o  Page Analysis is enabled by default.

This way, scanned or opened images will be split up in zones automatically.

You can also use the zoning tools on the image toolbar to modify the page analysis results or to zone your documents manually. For more information, see the section Zoning documents manually.

• When you are done selecting the options, click the Scan or Open button to scan documents or open image files.

OPENING IMAGE FILES

With Readiris you can either process paper documents you scan with your scanner or process already existing images files of various formats.

To open existing image files:

•  Click the Open button to search for image files.

Tip: you can also drag image files to the Readiris icon on the Dock to open them.

  Tip: Ctrl-click any image file you want to open, point to Open With and click Readiris. The Readiris software will open and display the image.

Tip: when loading multipage image files (TIFF images) and PDF documents, you can define the page range (in case you only need a certain chapter of a document for instance).

• Readiris supports the following graphic formats: GIF images, JPEG images, JPEG2000 images, MacPaint images, Photoshop images, PICT images, PNG images, QuickDraw GX images, QuickTime images, Silicon Graphics images, Targa images, (uncompressed, packbits and Group 3 compressed) TIFF images, multipage TIFF images, Windows bitmaps (BMP) and PDF documents.

• Select the image file of your choice and click Open.

To zoom in on the opened image, use the magnifying glass on the image toolbar or Cmd-click inside the image.

• You can also open multiple images files at a time:

o Select the first image file and hold down the Cmd-key as you select additional images or;

o Select a continuous range of image files by clicking the first image and holding down the Shift key as you select the last image.

Should you want to terminate the loading process, press Esc on your keyboard.

When you open multiple image files at a time, the drawer will open and display the page thumbnails.

Note that you can also drag-and-drop image files from the Desktop to the Readiris icon on the Dock to open them.

Note: when you click the Open button on the main toolbar after you have saved your current document, you will be prompted whether you want to delete the current document or not. Click No to add image files to the recognized document or click Yes to start a new document.

SCANNING PAPER DOCUMENTS

With Readiris you can either process paper documents you scan with your scanner or process already existing images files of various formats.

To scan documents:

•  First select the scanner settings. To access them, click Preferences on the Readiris menu.

Make sure your scanner is connected to your Mac and configured correctly. If not, the Scanner settings will be disabled.

 Scanner

Select your scanner from the list. Readiris is both Twain and Image Capture compliant.

Note: some scanners that support both Twain and Image Capture drivers may appear twice in the list.

Calibrate

Click the Calibrate button should it be necessary to calibrate your scanner.

Format

You can either choose an automatic scanning format or a custom format for which you can indicate the page height and width.

Depth

Readiris supports black-and-white, grayscale and color images.

Resolution

Select a scanning resolution of 300 dpi.

Invert image

Sometimes Twain scanners display white text on a black background when scanning in black-and-white. To invert those images select the Invert image option.

Note: this option is only available for Twain scanners.

•  Several preprocessing options are available in the Preferences window as well:

o You can choose to smoothen color and grayscale images.

During scanning this option renders grayscale and color images more homogeneous by smoothening out differences in intensity. As a result, a stronger contrast is created between the foreground (text) and background (artwork). Sometimes smoothening is the only way to separate text from a colored background.

  Note that this function is not the same as the one you find in the Adjust image options on the Process menu.

o Select Process as 300 dpi when you are processing images of an incorrect or unknown resolution. The images will be processed as if they had a 300 dpi resolution.

The resolution of digital camera images is nearly always unknown.

o Select Digital camera when you are using a camera as scan source. Readiris uses special recognition routines to process digital camera images.

Readiris supports Sony, HP, Canon, Casio and Fuji camera's as scan source. Note that you can load already existing TIFF and JPEG pictures from any type of camera, however.

Tips for using a digital camera as scan source:

§   Calibrate the camera by photographing a white document.

§   Always select the highest image resolution.

§   Enable the macro mode of the camera to take close-ups.

§   Only use optical zoom, not digital zoom.

§   Hold the camera directly above the document. Avoid photographing the document at an angle.

§   Produce stable images. Use a tripod if necessary.

§   Disable the flash when capturing glossy paper.

§   Avoid opening compressed camera images.

§   Adapt the Readiris brightness and contrast settings to the environment (daylight, lamp light, neon light).

§   Select color or grayscale as color mode.

• When you are done defining all the settings, click OK.

• Then click the Scan button to scan documents.

 Note: pay attention to line skew. Line skew over 0.5° increases the risk of OCR errors.