To capture the perfect photo, you need to do more than just be in the right place at the right time. You also have to understand your camera's settings and how they work to make the image beautiful.

The same is true of capturing documents through info-scanning. Document scanners range in complexity from the single-button equivalent of a point-n-shoot camera to high volume production units with lots of configuration settings. Regardless of the document scanner used, being familiar with some of the main features can be a big help in determining the most appropriate scanner to buy and yield the highest level of quality scanned results possible.

While not an exhaustive list of all scanner settings, understanding these key options is guaranteed to get you up and scanning like a pro in no time:

Thresholding: This is probably the most single important adjustment setting available to you on a scanner.  Use threshold to make sure the textual content of a document is properly imaged, without being too light or too dark. Most paper documents that we think of as “black and white” actually have many shades of gray in between. When scanned using the B&W setting, the scanner decides: “Is this gray that I see a black

, or should this gray be interpreted as a white?” Setting the threshold tells the scanner how dark/gray a mark or character on the paper needs to be to be scanned in order to be seen and interpreted as black, thus, appearing on the final outputted image.

Adaptive Thresholding or iThresholding: This setting works much like the “auto white balance” features on a digital camera. The scanner measures the light and amount of contrast that it is reading on the document and adjusts the threshold setting 'on the fly' to get what it determines will be the best possible image. If you scan a variety of colors, shades, and textures in your original documents, iThresholding is a nice feature to have.

Dithering :  Dithering is the attempt by a computer program to convert grays to different densities of black dots. These simulated gray tones use geometric groupings of pixels to form patterns representing shades of gray.  If you are scanning informational documents, you typically do not want to have dithering turned on since dithered images often appear grainy and unsharp.

Deskewing: This setting is responsible for straightening up an image that has been twisted or fed into the scanner slanted. Automatic Document Feeders can turn an image oblique, as the page goes through the scanner. Deskewing will help your finished scan appear straight and in alignment. If planning to apply optical character recognition (OCR) to the scanned file, deskewing is particularly important. Readjusting the document into proper alignment makes it easier for the OCR software to read the text accurately and yields a higher degree of accuracy.

Rotation: Rotation allows you to flip the orientation of a scanned document, typically in either 90, 180, or 270 degree increments.

Despeckling: Got pesky little black dots and specks that tend to appear on scanned pages? The despeckling setting will allow you to remove them. This reduces your file size, makes your scanned document look better, and improves OCR accuracy.

Color Drop Out: This setting allows the scanner to ignore certain colors of light. Scanners, like flash cameras, work by shining a bright light on the object and recording what light is reflected back into the “lens.” Using Red, Green, or Blue Dropout tells the scanner to ignore that particular color. For instance, if you have a form that has red borders and instructions, fill it out in black ink, and scan it with Red Dropout, your scanned image will only have the information written in black.

TIP: If trying to get yellow and blue highlighter to disappear while scanning documents in B&W, try using green dropout. This will typically let the scanner look right through the highlighter color to scan the text underneath it!

Anti-Aliasing: This setting makes scanned fonts look smoother.

Cropping: Just like in scrapbooking or photo editing, cropping cuts out and deletes parts of the scanned image.

Optical Character Recognition: The OCR setting turns loose a computer algorithm to "read" through scanned documents and attempt to figure out what letters and words are being represented. OCR typically needs a clean, straight, 300 dpi scan to work well, and it is never 100% perfect. The end result is a scanned representation of the document page that is searchable for the content it contains within it.

Blank Page Removal: In the real world, most stacks of documents are partially one-sided and partially two-sided. This setting to detect blank pages and automatically remove them from the scanned image eliminates spending valuable time switching between simplex and duplex scanning modes or having to delete blank pages out of scanned documents one at a time.

i/oTrak is committed to making paper easier. We are a Kodak Authorized Info & Photo Scanning Equipment Reseller and Document Conversion Center. We offer a range of back-office services to help businesses of all sizes with their document needs, including E-Z Scan, E-Z Store, E-Z Shred, and E-Z Send.

Contact one of our client solution specialists today to learn more.