manual file types

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Tue Feb 1 07:05:08 2005

On Mon, 2005-01-31 at 23:53 +0000, Antonio Carlini wrote:
> > TIFF file (big)
>
> The general consensus seems to be that bi-level scanning
> with a resolution of at least 300dpi but preferably 400dpi
> (although I tend to use 600dpi). G4 encoded TIFF is pretty
> good space wise (obviously lously compared to text).

Apart from it's horrible for anything source documentation with pictures
in it. Quite often I find someone's scanned something without proofing
it first and then saved it with bi-level, completely trashing any photos
inside :-( It's annoying when it's some hard-to-find document and you
not only want the information but the presentation of the original too.

Plus I'm still dubious about bi-level for text that might need to be
OCRed at a later date - in theory it's fine, but in practice when a
document's well-used and may contain scuff marks, dirt etc. then
encoding at bi-level might destroy information (by treating a scuff mark
over the text as black) that could otherwise have been preserved.

Generally I encode front and back covers as 300dpi colour TIFFs (either
8 or 24 bit depending on the composition) and text as 300dpi greyscale
TIFFs. Of course that doesn't mean someone can't encode to bi-level if
needs be, but at least I know the information is in electronic form at a
reasonable quality in the event of the original document being lost.

cheers

Jules
Received on Tue Feb 01 2005 - 07:05:08 GMT