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Document Conversion,
also know as Digital Imaging, is the process of
converting a piece of printed paper into a
visual image that can be viewed by electronic
means on a personal computer or workstation. By
transforming written information into
streamlined electronic images, one can actually
bypass time constraints of the past and connect
their data to the world in a matter of seconds.
The digital imaging process consists of:
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Preparation of documents such as
removing staples and paper clips
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Scanning of documents, normally at
200 to 300 dots-per-inch (DPI)
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Indexing, which names the file
according to a company’s
requirements
- OCR
processing, which allows each
character to be recognized
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Quality Control, to ensure the
documents meet quality requirements
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Document Destruction of Source
(original) documents, then recycling
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Document conversion
is performed by scanning a piece or paper or
photo, or even an object as 2D, and saving the
digitized image as a TIFF, JPG, BMP, PNG, or
another format. The different formats indicate
different resolutions and are used for different
purposes. For example, when scanning a photo to
print, resolution is measured in dots-per-inch;
the higher the DPI, the more crisp, clear, and
large the image is. The downside to a high DPI
is that the image size is very large and usually
takes longer to email or save electronically. If
you only need a small image to be viewed on a
cell phone, a JPG will be fine since it will
transmit quickly and doesn’t need to be as crisp
and clear as a printed photo and is a lot
smaller.
If a file has multiple pages, all pages can be
included in the electronic file after being
scanned. So, you will have one electronic file,
and when you open it up for viewing, all the
pages are there.
When paper is scanned and a digital image is
produced, the image can be transmitted,
displayed, and printed, but is not “text
searchable” at this point. To be able to search
a digital image that contains text, and be able
to recognize the words, a process is performed
called Optical Character Recognition (OCR).
Performing an OCR process on a digital image
allows a computer to recognize each word (and
each character of each word), and therefore lets
a user put a keyword in a search box, and have a
list of documents that contain the keyword be
displayed on the computer.
After conversion, documents are now electronic,
and are stored securely on a system that allows
users to search instantly for documents. This
system may be as simple as an external hard
drive or server, or web-based on a corporate
intranet, serving multiple offices and
locations. |
