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Scanned attachments - pdf or image?


Scan and import as PDF or image?  

4 members have voted

  1. 1. Do you scan and import attachments as pdf or image?

    • pdf
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    • image
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I use my iPhone to scan everything with the app ScannerPro. I am reevaluating if I should be doing images or pdf's for getting documents into EN.  I am wondering what other folks do - pdf or image for attachments? Do you use the build in scanner with EN? Another app? And why you might use that option?

 

 

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2 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

PDF, and best already OCRed by ScannerPro.

This is what I have been doing - especially since ScannerPro OCR got so much better with v8. But I am finding it struggles with some things lately and has me questioning it. And I wonder about the ability of EN to find text within OCR'd documents from other sources.

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58 minutes ago, buckethead said:

pdf or image for attachments?

I use pdf format for scanned documents, using my iPad and Evernote's Scannable app   
The app is free, does a good job and interfaces with Evernote
No OCR, but Evernote has it's own OCR process

Image format has benefits    
- inline display when viewing a note   
- ...

PDF format has benefits   
- multi page   
- ocr'd text can be embedded as a layer within the pdf     
- ...

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...What @DTLow said.  I have a ScanSnap sheet-fed scanner and an Epson photo printer/ scanner  - one for documents and the other for 'serious' photo scans. I also use my Samsung phone for ad-hoc scanning (using one of several apps,  most frequently Evernote) and pictures when out and about - also images where the object I want to 'scan' has more corners than will fit into my scanners.  My choices depend on what is currently available to scan the item in question,  and whether we're scanning for a multi-page document I will need for reference,  or imaging a tear-down summary of how my phone goes together during a repair. 

Images are always visible inline unless you specifically choose that they are not... but searches are more hit and miss depending on focus and resolution.  Plus image recognition is more scattergun - a sign saying 'house for sale' might be interpreted as house,  hearse or horse - and a search for any of the three would turn up this image.  All the options would be present in the search metadata for that note.

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1 hour ago, buckethead said:

This is what I have been doing - especially since ScannerPro OCR got so much better with v8. But I am finding it struggles with some things lately and has me questioning it. And I wonder about the ability of EN to find text within OCR'd documents from other sources.

It is quite simple: If there is a text layer embedded into a pdf, EN will not OCR it again. So it depends on the OCR quality of the 3rd party software. I think usually ScannerPro does a good job with OCR. You can check yourself, with the picture / text views build into the app. With all standard text it will do a very good job. Heavily designed text is tricky for all OCR software.

There is one other aspect why I do not much rely on the EN OCR: EN is not embedding the OCR results into the attachment. It stores it into the notes metadata, or somewhere into a database. So once you leave EN (which I am not planning for, but just in case …), you can take your documents, but without the OCR. If the OCR is in the attachment, it will go with the attachment even when I need to move it elsewhere.

To avoid this sort of self inflicted lock in, I prefer the embedded OCR done before importing.

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