Scan a document of poor quality

You can use scanning presets to maximize the accuracy of optical character recognition (OCR) on documents of poor quality, whether they are in color or black and white.

Scan a document for optimum OCR

1. Position the document on your scanner.
2. On the File menu, click Scan New Document.
3. Do one of the following:
   • If you are scanning a grainy or indistinct document, such as a multi-generation photocopy or newspaper clipping, select Black and white from color page.

   • If you are scanning a black and white document and want to retain continuous-tone images such as photographs, select Grayscale.

4. Click Scan.
5. If you don't get acceptable results, try the procedure in the next section, "Increase the scanning resolution."

Increase the scanning resolution

1. Position the document on your scanner.
2. On the File menu, click Scan New Document, and then click Edit preset.
3. Click either Create new preset or Edit selected preset.
4. On the General tab, click Advanced.
5. In the Resolution box, select the number of dots per inch you want.

   Note   The higher the number of dots per inch, the larger the resulting file will be. In addition, files scanned at extremely high resolutions can sometimes make OCR more difficult. Scanning resolutions between 300 and 400 dots per inch are recommended for best results.