Scanning Text

 

 

Since scanning is nothing more than the computer taking a picture, it doesn’t know a picture of the Washington

Monument from a copy of the constitution.

 

There are two options for scanning text.

One for just sending the document to someone and the other for

being able to edit the text that you’ve scanned.

 

Making a copy of text to send electronically

 

If you just want to send a “copy” of some text over

the Internet then scan as you would any picture.

But when saving use the file format PDF. This will

allow anyone to read it on any computer running the

Adobe Acrobat Reader—this is a free piece of

software that most Internet users have on their

computers.

 

Making a copy of text to edit

 

If you wish to edit the scanned document you will

need some special software. The software used to

“Read” text is known as OCR—Optical Character

Recognition. This software compares parts of the

“picture” with “alpha­numeric” characters it has in

memory. The quality of the text scanned and the

font used will determine the quality of the output.

 

Text in paragraph form is best suited for this type of

scanning. Text that has lines, drawings, tables,

marks on the paper or non­standard fonts are

difficult to scan. Text that is too light to read is also

difficult to scan.

 

Procedure for scanning to edit:

Click on the

(Readiris) on the launcher.

Click on the

(Gears) on the tool bar.

Click on the

(scan preview.)

 

Outline the area you wish to scan and edit—see

directions on outlining an area under scanning

pictures.

 

Click SCAN from the menu bar.

 

Click Return to Readiris.

 

Upon re­scanning you will be asked to name and

save the file. The computer should then open

AppleWorks and the document should be available

for editing.