digitise-it.com

Digitise-it.com Ltd
SPECIALISTS IN ARCHIVAL
DOCUMENT AND BOOK DIGITISING

The total solution to digitising
Either we do it for you, or you do it and we show you how.

SCANNING SERVICES

We carry out a very wide range of scanning services. Digitising books, bound documents, flat documents, newspapers, magazines, photographs, old invoices, ledger books, etc. You name it. We have considerable experience in scanning old historical documents, both paper and vellum.

In addition, we are able to provide output not only as graphics files, but also carry out optical character recognition, and output in a wide range of formats including PDF files. And finally, we offer a complete CD and DVD production facility using state of the art machines.

Some important considerations before you start

Before even looking at getting the job done, we need to consider:

  1. The type of document and whether it should be scanned in full colour, greyscale or bitonal
  2. What we want to use the scanned images for.

There are three types of document scanning, bitonal, grey scale or colour. It is fairly important for any publication to have either one or the other for consistency, although it is possible to scan a book that has the occasional photograph or lithographic illustration as bitonal with interspersed grey scale scans and colour scans.

Either type can be used with optical character recognition (OCR) if required. (Subject to a satisfactory original document or book).

Bitonal scanning

This is simple black and white. It is ideal for most printed books, including those with illustrations that are line engravings. Exceptions may be where an old printed book is very inconsistent in print density, i.e. a mixture of greys and black.

The end result graphics files are very much smaller than grey scale scans, and therefore more images can be stored on a CD either as graphics files or PDF files.

Grey Scale scanning

Grey Scale scanning is ideal for documents or books that contain:

  • hand written pages
  • photographs
  • lithographs

Hand written documents can sometimes be scanned as bitonal, but the ink density needs to be very good, and very consistent indeed.

Images scanned in grey scale can result in very large file sizes, and therefore fewer images can be stored on a single CD. Typically about 500 pages, either as TIFF files or PDF files. We have perfected grey scale scanning to be able to scan the lightest / faded handwriting, or even writing in pencil.

Colour Scanning

Colour scanning is ideal for documents or books that contain:

  • hand written pages
  • photographs
  • lithographs
  • and of course, coloured documents and photographs

Images scanned in Colour do result in extremely large file sizes and so are saved as JPG images unless requested as Tiff images by the customer.

What do you need it for?

  • Book & Document Prints
  • Book Facsimile Reprints
  • Web Publishing
  • CD Publishing
  • Just to view on screen
  • Archival Storage

This is an extremely important consideration. Let's put one myth to rest right from the start, because we often get asked the question. 1,200 dpi (dots per inch) resolution is something that many people feel that they need. Because it is very high resolution. The best. Right? Well, actually, no. Scanner manufacturers often quote that their scanners will produce 1200 dpi, but really, that is a "fiddled" figure. Let's explain that in terms of a normal digital camera. A digital camera can have a zoom capability, but there are two types of zoom. Optical zoom, and digital zoom. Optical zoom is good. Digital zoom enlarges further, but gives poorer quality. A lot! 1200 dpi in most scanners is very similar in principle. It is a "fiddled" figure. It is (literally) "interpolated". It is a lower resolution but digitally altered to a larger physical size, with the extra pixels filled in and averaged out. It does have its uses in some applications, such as very high quality colour book printing, where printing companies have really special huge printing machines.

Now something else. Not a lot of people know this. When you are looking at a really great colour image on your computer screen, you are viewing it at 72 dpi (dots per inch). Yes. Just 72.

So think about this. Why scan at a very high resolution if the image is only ever to be viewed on a computer screen and at a fixed size on screen? (High resolution equals very large file size, and takes much longer to display too).

If the image needs to be physically large so that it can be either enlarged on screen, or panned over the screen window, then yes - scan at a higher resolution. Because a higher resolution produces a physically larger image.

If you want to scan a book so that a facsimile can be reprinted, then yes - scan at a higher resolution. But actually, for normal print, even 300dpi is satisfactory, or perhaps 400dpi. Only the very highest quality professional printers can go up to a real 1200 dpi, and that is not really necessary for a facsimile reprint.

Web publishing and CD publishing is normally done by scanning the original images at either 200dpi or 300dpi (300dpi minimum if the text is going to be OCRd). For over-size pages in a book, such as a fold-out map, 400dpi is good, because it enables the image to be enlarged further without showing the individual image pixels.

Images for archival storage can be scanned at either 300dpi or 400dpi. This is more than satisfactory if a facsimile print needs ever to be made. (Things such as invoices, receipts, etc can be happily scanned at a lower resolution).

There is a special consideration for true long term archiving of ancient documents

Is microfilm a more permanent medium than digital scanning for ancient documents? Actually yes. BUT. Much better results can be obtained by digital scanning, and then making films from the digital scans. Microfilm is expected to be good for 500 years. Who knows with digital? There will always be light and a magnifying glass, so with microfilm, you never need to be concerned about reading it in the long distant future. With digital, it is the computer, software and storage medium that will be a problem, unless the images are converted to be readable using future technology. That in itself will be no big problem - as long as we remember to do it.

But microfilming has inbuilt disadvantages!

  • The quality is not so good as a digital scan, especially with very small print. Think of it this way. Film a whole large format newspaper page, and then consider that the image has been reduced down to just 35mm in size. Come back later to enlarge it back to its original size and the quality is extremely poor. With a digital image, it can be enlarged and reprinted at its original size perfectly.
  • Inconsistent hand written documents, damaged and faded documents, etc. have problems with microfilming, even in greyscale. That's because it is virtually impossible to expose the film to bring out faded handwriting on a stained background and normal density handwriting on a good background on the same page. But a digital scan can cope with that.
  • You want another copy of the film? Then that second copy is poor compared with the original, and even worse if a copy is made from a copy. Its just like the results when you try to make a photocopy of a photocopy of a picture. The result is horrible! That's because it is an analog process.

However - A film can be made from a digital scan! The film then has all of the advantages of the extra quality of the digital scanning process. And, a second, or even 100th generation film is as good as the first! That's because each film copy is made from the digital copy!

For general use, we also need to consider accessibility. The digital copy can be made very easily accessible, on many computers at the same time, and anywhere in the world. Perfect clone copies can be made virtually instantly.

Now we can look at our services
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