"Standard" Format for Scanned Drawings

  • Thread starter Thread starter TheScullster
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TheScullster

Hi all

We are in the process of setting up a document scanner and have the option
of tiff or pdf output.
Is there a "standard" used across the industry for our storage and for
distribution to clients?

From a layman's viewpoint, Tiff is better if we want to crop a part of a
drawing and send it, but PDF is more secure for external distribution.

Any thoughts on an adopted "standard" or other pros/cons.
I've checked the file size and for a given resolution, the file size is
pretty much the same PDF or TIFF.

TIA

Phil
 
TheScullster said:
Hi all

We are in the process of setting up a document scanner and have the option
of tiff or pdf output.
Is there a "standard" used across the industry for our storage and for
distribution to clients?

From a layman's viewpoint, Tiff is better if we want to crop a part of a
drawing and send it, but PDF is more secure for external distribution.

Any thoughts on an adopted "standard" or other pros/cons.
I've checked the file size and for a given resolution, the file size is
pretty much the same PDF or TIFF.

TIA

Phil
Click to expand...
Tiff is a industry standard image format.

PDF is a de facto standard for insuring that the document prints as the
author intended.
PDF stands for Portable Document Format.

Tiff is not searchable.
PDF usually is searchable. PDF has Image only modes and Text search modes.

The advantage of PDF is the document always prints the way the author
designed, and the Text is searchable.
 
We are in the process of setting up a document scanner and have the
option of tiff or pdf output. Is there a "standard" used across the
industry for our storage and for distribution to clients?
Click to expand...

"The industry"? *Which* industry? The prepress industry? The
goat-milk manufacturing industry?
From a layman's viewpoint, Tiff is better if we want to crop a part of
a drawing and send it, but PDF is more secure for external
distribution. Any thoughts on an adopted "standard" or other
pros/cons?
Click to expand...

See first paragraph. What do you mean by "PDF is more secure"? PDF's
big failing is that it's essentially a read-only medium; once you've
converted something to PDF, it's a PITA to convert it to anything else
(except PostScript... which is usually not what you need.) TIFF and PDF
are both standard, Open formats, so any user anywhere should be able to
read both of them. If your users need to modify/convert/fiddle with the
images you send them, use TIFF. If they don't, you can use PDF. I'd
use TIFF because it's more flexible, but YMMV.
I've checked the file size and for a given resolution, the file size
is pretty much the same PDF or TIFF.
Click to expand...

This is almost certainly because your document scanner's software is
creating PDFs by putting a small wrapper of PDF code around the TIFF
data.
 
Tiff is not searchable.
PDF usually is searchable. PDF has Image only modes and Text search modes.

The advantage of PDF is the document always prints the way the author
designed, and the Text is searchable.
Click to expand...

Not in this case, based on the information provided. That is, unless the
scanned documents are first OCR-ed and saved and then PDF-ed, the PDF search
capabilities are useless.

To the original poster: Rather than comply with a "standard" which will
essentially be "whatever's popular right now", what do _you_ want to do?
What do _you_ want to send to your clients? What do _your_ clients want to
receive? TIF and PDF are "standards" insofar as most every single system can
read them and software is included in most OSes or available as a free/cheap
add-on to handle the viewing and printing of them.

Do you want to make the resulting files secure against tampering? PDF. Do
you want to be able to easily edit them? TIF. Do you want to edit and then
archive and make them tamper-proof? TIF, edit, then PDF. If the final result
is edited and complete and the quality reduction is acceptable, have you
tried JPG to reduce size? How about JPG and then PDF?

You have lots of flexibility and lots of options. Think through what your
desired end result is, and then build the process to meet it.
HTH
 
phil-at-dropthespam.com said:
From a layman's viewpoint, Tiff is better if we want to crop a part of a
drawing and send it, but PDF is more secure for external distribution.
Click to expand...

Exactly. PDF is not intended to be an archival media. PDF is only
designed and intended for printing (and/or viewing), and is great for
that, and this may be your only purpose here. However getting your
original data back out of PDF for use for other purposes is a pain. PDF is
not so designed, thus not compatible with archival purposes if more than
printing/viewing might ever be necessary.

PDF can be fantastic to print, very convenient (esp multipage), and to be
certain how it will print for the other party. Or great also to send a
copy to others who will not edit them, and that may be your only purpose
in this case. You may have other archived master copies.

But if archiving these scans, the master copy should be TIF.
 
It depends on what your clients expect. You could always ask them.

If they expect to edit the document you will want to make TIF available.
PDF is actually a wrapper around TIF, although the default settings
for Acrobat will compress the TIF, possibly more than you would want.
Since the file sizes are close, it sounds like Acrobat is not
compression the TIF beyond whatever the default is for the scanner software.

I would suggest you scan to TIF for your own records and then create a
secure PDF file to send out. That is what I do when I need to perform a
similar task.
 
Thanks to all respondents.
It is obvious from the replies that I need a better idea of the company's
requirements to make a "future-enabled" decision.

Phil
 
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