You Don’t Have to Be a Geek to Understand Document Conversion.
August 4th, 2007
What is document conversion? Document conversion is the conversion of paper and electronic files using computer technologies such as scanning, OCR (optical character recognition), paper to cad conversion to capture or store a file in a particular digital format.
Document scanning converts scanned paper and drawings into raster files. A raster file can be viewed and printed but not edited. Some of the more popular raster formats are TIFF, CALS, PDF, and JPEG. TIFF is the best format for conversion of scanned drawings to CAD. PDF cannot be directly inserted into most CAD and GIS software.
CAD programs display raster (usually scanned) images, and in order to edit the image you will need to digitize or trace the raster image (raster to vector) to create an editable vector file. Drawings can be converted at relatively low costs by firms that employ large format scanning and offshore CAD operators to manually digitize or trace the raster image to perfect CAD format The cad file is dimensionally correct, layered to your specifications, into accurate working drawings.
PDF is the preferred format to archive your paper files. There are three types of PDF formats (1) PDF image only, (2) PDF searchable and (3) PDF normal. The PDF image only is a scanned image of the document that is similar to a fax or photocopy. The PDF searchable image contains text behind the images produced by OCR software for search purposes. PDF normal is an electronic file converted directly from a word processing program and created by using a PDF print driver. PDF normal has a small file size suitable for web distribution.
Optical Character Recognition is an automated process performed by computer software to convert scanned images into an editable Microsoft Word or text file. OCR is best suited for good quality printed pages and is usually highly accurate for manuscripts and text documents.
OCR scanning produces a high rate of errors on poor quality originals, dirty or hand-annotated documents and offshore data entry (key from image) is more cost effective due to the time consuming manual correction required to cleanup the document. Data entry is also more accurate for complicated documents like spreadsheets or lease agreements.
For more information visit http://www.new-york-document-scanning.com
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