Copyright issues?...

Q. What about Copyright Issues?
A. Book Scan Bureau cannot be held responsible for any breaches of copyright caused by the service we are providing to our customers. It is your responsibility to establish the necessary copyright permissions for the material you require scanning.

Kirtas BookScan APT / Kabis Range / Image Editing Software...

Q. Can the Kirtas APT / Kabis BookScan range cope with loose pages?
A. Every book is carefully hand checked by our operators before scanning. Any loose sheets are identified at this stage and scanned separately. The page can them be inserted at the correct location using the integrated BookScan Editor software (version 3.6).

Q. Can the Kirtas APT BookScan range cope with paper back books?
A. Our scanners are equipped with specially designed soft cover clamps to cope with paper back, and soft bound documents. It is advisable for us to complete a free 30 page sample to make sure that we match the desired output. You can benefit from the offer and register your interest here.

Q. Does the Kirtas APT / Kabis BookScan range cope with colour pages?
A. Yes. Colour Scans are available. We can also use a technique known as 'Image Segmentation' to allow a mixture of output formats on the same scanned page keeping file sizes to a minimum. So for example a page could combine binary (black and white) text with greyscale or full colour images. We can also supply multiple outputs derived from the same scan.

Q. Can the scanner editing software cope with page curvature?
A. Clamps hold the book in place so that the page is as flat as possible when the photograph(s) are taken. The scanning software then automatically detects these clamps and removes them from the scanned image. The editing software also has a in-built correction feature to minimise page curvature based upon algorithms. Other features of the software editor include de skewing and brightness / contrast adjustment and sharpening.

Q. What happens to the blank pages in books with single-sided text once they are scanned?
A. We can set the Kirtas range to only scan one side of a book using the features within APT Manager thus eliminating actual scanning of the blank, this is the software used to apply settings for the machine. Please note that removing blanck pages can disrupt pagination of the finished title however.

OCR - Optical Character Recognition...

Q. What is OCR?
A. OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. It refers to the process by which a scanned document is electronically analysed, so that the text information can be extracted from the image and reproduced as a text file. Text generated by OCR is often input into text search databases, allowing retrieval of the original scanned image based on its content. This text information can also be embedded in your PDF file to make these documents fully searchable as if they were pure text files. This process works on Colour / Greyscal & Bi-Tonal PDF's.

Q. Can the OCR software cope with old fashioned type faces and printing conventions?
A. The OCR software applies heuristic analysis as well as image detection to scanned files. This means that the software works by identifying words and phrases as well as individual letters, therefore a wide variety in text styles can be accommodated. OCR Engines can also be trained to read certain texts.

Scanner Output...

Q. What is the difference between the TIFF and JPEG image formats?
A. TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is a flexible standard that it is widely supported by many image processing applications. We use TIFF for black & white images as the TIFF compression algorithm used is best suited to this application. JPEG on the other hand is used for its ability to compress colour image file sizes. JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) compression is superior to other formats such as GIF for reproducing full-colour and greyscale images, but JPEG is still a 'lossy' form of compression, meaning that parts of the image are discarded in the process of converting it to a JPEG file. Conservative levels of JPEG compression can have negligible impact on the resulting image as far as the human eye is concerned, and still reduce the file to a fraction of its original size. At higher levels of compression however image blurring and 'artifacts' can appear, though this is the compromise necessary to achieve very small file sizes. We are also able to supply LZW TIFF Compression, JPG2000 compression and RAW files (Canon RAW Image).

Q. Which storage medium do you recommend?
A.The short answer is that no storage media is going to last forever. However it is generally accepted that microfilm/microfiche has the longest life span (approximately 100 years), it is also immune to the obsolescence that can affect file formats in the fast moving software industry. All that is needed to view microfilm is a light source. However for integrating your electronic-documents with a computerised environment digital storage formats are needed. The DVD/CD formats we offer have an estimated life span of around 30 years. Flash Drive or any removable storage can be used. We also offer a web based system to securely hold your documents in a safe place. We can also use our dedicated FTP to deliver your scanned documents safely and quickly to you.

Q. How can I view PDF files?
A. PDF is a file format developed by Adobe to allow documents to be viewed regardless of the original software, hardware, or operating system which the document was created on. This makes PDF a truly portable format, and as such it has become the de facto standard for the exchange of electronic documentation.

Adobe makes their Acrobat Reader package freely available for download here.

Please submit any other questions via our contact us section.