Ira Wallin wrote:
>
> I want to catalogue lots of personal documents by scanning them in and storing
> them in directories.   In what format should I save them.....bmp?  gif?   jpg?
> something else?  It doesn't seem I should use .doc even for all text, since I
> do not want to edit them at all.

Since you've said that you don't intend to edit these documents once
they're scanned, we can forget about OCR'ing them into text documents
and storing them that way. This leaves you with the task of scanning and
storing them as graphical representations of the original. To that end,
it partially depends on the type and quantity of documents you have, and
the amount of storage space you can allocate. If they are simple black
text on white paper, then GIF would make a fine choice because of it's
small file size and accurate rendition of (up to) 256 colors. On the
other hand, if your documents are in full color, (meaning more than 256
colors), then the GIF format will distort them by limiting the amount of
color information. JPG can retain millions of colors, but because of its
lossy compression, it frequently "smears" the colors, especially if the
source has lots of straight lines and instances where one color lies
directly beside another very contrasting color. In that case, a lossless
format would preserve the original the best, such as BMP or TIF, but as
with any lossless format, the file sizes tend to grow quite large,
relative to the lossy formats such as GIF and JPG. Only you can decide
what a proper tradeoff is, given your particular circumstances.

Hopefully, just knowing each format's limitations will make it easier to
pick the right one. I'd recommend experimenting with your scanner
settings, and once you're happy with them, then also experiment with
different file formats. For additional scan tips, check out
http://www.scantips.com.


Jeff Delzer

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