We can create hundreds of different file formats for scanned images. However the most typical are PDF and TIFF. JPEG is a popular format but is only a single page format so it does not lend itself that well to document scanning, JPEG is also a colour format whereas most bulk document scanning projects will be monochrome. PDF is now a recognised standard.

OCR Optical Character Recognition / Searchable PDF Files
Searchable text / OCR text is becoming more and more popular when scanning documents. Once a document is scanned, the text that is on the scan can be automatically recognised and stored so that the data can be searched at a later date. The best example of this is the use of PDF searchable files.

Using the standard Acrobat Reader, an entire archive of searchable PDF files can be searched. Acrobat will then provide a results list of all the recognised occurances of the word (or number) searched for. During normal viewing, the user is presented with the original document scan, the searchable text that was recognised on the document scan is stored behind the scan layer. The recognised text can also be copied out and pasted into an application such as MS Word where is can be edited as a normal Word document.

We also offer OCR / Optical Character Recognition Services, where we scan the original document and return the file as both a Word document and also a searchable PDF.