OCR has become a common necessity today in almost every workplace. With the help of a scanner and OCR conversion software, making digital copies of hard copy documents is becoming very easy. After all, in the present globalized and fast-paced business world, one cannot afford to waste time or even overhead expenses. Keeping hard copies of documents takes up ample space in the work space, which otherwise could have been used for better purposes. Also, maintaining those documents incurs charges and for making new documents you have to keep on spending on paper. But the modern work spaces today are gradually going paperless and finding out new and improved ways of being effective. Conversion with OCR is one such method. Given below are some basic tips on how you can ensure good results in the conversion.
Get the document preparing right
The first step to OCR conversion is getting a scanned image. And for successful scanning, the document needs to be prepared well. This means, the document should be rid of any clips or staples and should be smoothened out properly. Torn documents should be fixed with transparent matte tape first, before scanning. The document should be in the proper sequence too.
Make sure the image is of high resolution
In order to get great OCR conversion results, first you need to get a very good quality image that is high In clarity. The work of the OCR software is to scan the image provided to it and then recognize the areas that have to be converted into characters it is trained to convert into. Hence, when scanning, the software has to clearly recognize the characters in the scanned image, so as to maintain high levels of accuracy in the conversion. If the image is a high resolution one, then it will be crisp in clarity and hence the software will easily identify the characters. In order to get the resolution right, you must know which resolution suits such scanned documents best. If the document is a complete black and white one, then a resolution of 200 dpi should be enough. A high resolution of 400 dpi is meant for colorful images. The safest to choose is 300 dpi, which gives crisp images for both text and illustrations.
Why Clear Images Are Essential: Best Practices
To achieve optimal results, businesses should follow these best practices:
- Scan at High Resolution: A minimum of 300 DPI ensures sharp, detailed images.
- Align Documents Properly: Straightening pages prevents text distortion.
- Select the Appropriate Format: Formats like TIFF or PNG offer better compatibility and clarity.
By implementing these measures alongside image enhancement, businesses can reduce errors and enhance the efficiency of OCR technology.
Go for image enhancement
Even if you use a good quality original file, the scanning may often come out wrong. The image might get tilted or skewed in dimensions. There might be dots and specks on the scanned image and the brightness quotient of the image may be dull. In such circumstances, before moving it through the OCR conversion software, it will be necessary to enhance the image a bit. There are various such image enhancement tools which help to correct the scanned images and make them high quality enough to get good results from such OCR. If even after image enhancement, the image does not seem usable, then it is better to re-scan the document and get a better quality image.
Optimizing Image Quality for Accurate OCR Results
- Imperfection Removal: Eliminating visual artifacts such as specks, stains, and smudges that obscure text.
- Alignment Correction: Straightening skewed scans to enhance readability.
- Visibility Enhancement: Adjusting contrast and brightness to improve the legibility of faint or faded text.
By addressing these common issues, image enhancement enables OCR software to produce highly accurate results, even when processing suboptimal source documents.