Line art or black and white

  • Thread starter Thread starter Don
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Don

I've a unique issue of which I'm hoping for some suggestions.

The past few weeks I've been scanning two scrap books or which were
primarily filled with old news paper articles (many different
publications and/or dates, cut to many sizes) and photo copies of
newspaper articles.

It's been quite frustrating, however the actual scanning/digitization is
complete with the majority of the "images" having been saved as TIF's (so
that the capability of OCR will exist at a later date). The master TIF's
have also been converted to JPG's for easier viewing.

The solution that I looking for is a line art (two colors only) file
format that is possible to "scan as" in both Acrobat and Photoshop.
Both software's offer a "scan as", however I haven't had any success
finding and option to "convert to".

The goal is a plain and very compact file in PDF (1/100th the size of
the original TIF) in clear print and viewing quality.
[Please note; files initally scanned and saved in this line art/black
and white format in Photoshop offer excellent viewing, however are not
useable for OCR.]

Even tried some searches for utilities on google and most were related
to CAD files. Downloaded three and tested without success.

Thanks in advance.
 
I've a unique issue of which I'm hoping for some suggestions.

The past few weeks I've been scanning two scrap books or which were
primarily filled with old news paper articles (many different
publications and/or dates, cut to many sizes) and photo copies of
newspaper articles.

It's been quite frustrating, however the actual scanning/digitization
is
complete with the majority of the "images" having been saved as TIF's
(so that the capability of OCR will exist at a later date). The master
TIF's have also been converted to JPG's for easier viewing.

The solution that I looking for is a line art (two colors only) file
format that is possible to "scan as" in both Acrobat and Photoshop.
Both software's offer a "scan as", however I haven't had any success
finding and option to "convert to".

The goal is a plain and very compact file in PDF (1/100th the size of
the original TIF) in clear print and viewing quality.
[Please note; files initally scanned and saved in this line art/black
and white format in Photoshop offer excellent viewing, however are not
useable for OCR.]

Even tried some searches for utilities on google and most were
related
to CAD files. Downloaded three and tested without success.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Please disregard.

Believe I've found a workable solution in Ifranview.

1) Save as TIF
When Compression box comes up, select CCITT Fax 3 or 4
 
Please disregard.

Believe I've found a workable solution in Ifranview.

1) Save as TIF
When Compression box comes up, select CCITT Fax 3 or 4
Click to expand...


I wasnt sure I understood the question in your original post, but yes,
CCITT 3 or 4 compression (also called Group 3 or 4, or more often G3 and
G4) compresses line art much more than LZW can compress in photo editors.
All of these are lossless, but LZW also compresses color or grayscale,
and G3 or G4 only work with line art. G4 compresses a little better than
G3. Not every photo editor can open G3 or G4 however, so if you have
notions to email one to someone, it could cause them trouble.

Acrobat can handle them and in fact, Acrobat's PDF is so small because it
stores line art images with G4 compression (regardless if you have
compressed it first or not, so the extra operation may not matter to you
now). G4 compresses better than JPG, and without any losses, but only
lineart. JPG cannot compress line art.
 
Wayne said:
I wasnt sure I understood the question in your original post, but yes,
CCITT 3 or 4 compression (also called Group 3 or 4, or more often G3
and G4) compresses line art much more than LZW can compress in photo
editors. All of these are lossless, but LZW also compresses color or
grayscale, and G3 or G4 only work with line art. G4 compresses a
little better than G3. Not every photo editor can open G3 or G4
however, so if you have notions to email one to someone, it could
cause them trouble.

Acrobat can handle them and in fact, Acrobat's PDF is so small because
it stores line art images with G4 compression (regardless if you have
compressed it first or not, so the extra operation may not matter to
you now). G4 compresses better than JPG, and without any losses, but
only lineart. JPG cannot compress line art.
Click to expand...

Many thanks Wayne.

The bottom-line goal was a compact file of line art in PDF format.

I used Ifranview's batch conversion and than Acrobat's batch conversion.
Acrobat ran a bit slow on 500 files, even after the TIF's had been
downsized to G4.

This has been a quite frustrating project, however has proved beneficial
in that, it has expanded my understanding of some enhancemts for archival
that I had not been required to explore previously.
 
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