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How to scan to evernote correctly?

ncage

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ncage

ncage 3

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Hello everyone,

 

I've made up my mind i'm going to be getting a scansnap ix500 scanner and have quite a few general questions on scanning. I currently have a brother scanner that goes all the way up to 1200DPI and i'm always confused on what to scan at.

 

First of all my brother offers the array or scan types:

24bit color

256 color

True Gray

Gray (error diffusion)

Black & White

 

While of course some things scream scan in color the array or black/gray is confusing when you would want to use each. I don't know if the ix500 will have such an array of choices though. I might still occasionally use the brother scanner (because its also my printer) but i will use the ix500 most of the time

 

I'm also always confused about what resolution to scan at. Does the resolution you scan at affect the size of item when you print? Generally when i print i want a 1/1 reproduction of the original item scanned. I don't want to blow it up or shrink it down. So when i speak of size i'm not talking item weight (in terms of file size) but print size. Any recommendations on choosing what resolution to scan @?

 

Another question is there any need to make searchable pdfs because won't evernote essentially do that when they get uploaded? When they talk OCR capabilities the generally always talking about making the pdfs searchable or is that referring to something else?

 

I was suprised at the lack of TWAIN support. Is that really that important anymore?

 

For those who have an ix500 has Fujitsu been good on updating their drivers for new version of Mac/Windows? Brother has been awesome in terms of drivers support. I'd hate to have to update the scanner in a few years because the refuse to keep drivers updated.

 

One last question. Is it always advisable to scan most stuff in PDFs (excluding items that are really photos of course)?

 

Thanks everyone.... 

 

 

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gazumped

gazumped 11,666

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Wow.  What a lot of questions in one hit.  Here's some comments I prepared earlier...

 

General method:
 
You can scan with anything as long as it can scan to a desktop folder on your PC.
 
PDFs are better than JPG (picture) scans,  and 300DPI is the maximum resolution you need to OCR.
 
Save to a "searchable" PDF if you can - that will be indexed by Evernote as soon as the file is uploaded.  Otherwise you have to wait for Evernote to OCR.  This way you know it's done.
 
If you have a Windows computer,  scan to one folder for editing/ renaming of files and create another Input Folder.  
 
Once you've finished with the scanned documents,  drag and drop the files to to Input Folder and they'll be sucked into Evernote.
 
There's no official 'import folder' function in the Mac client yet,  but various script options are available mainly here http://veritrope.com/code_type/evernote/
 
When you've scanned a picture/ document you need to name it something useful - try "yyyymmdd - type - source - keywords" where
  • yyyymmdd is the date of the document or picture,  not the date you scanned it
  • type is photograph / receipt / letter / user guide - what is the general type of the item you scanned
  • source is "where did this come from?" - the name of your bank / accountant / bar etc (or of the people in the pic)
  • keywords is - anything else that might help you find this in a year's time.
-And for the first week or two:  DO NOT scan and then shred things - you might want to re-do stuff as you learn the best way to do this...  
 
Pictures stored in Evernote seem to lose some resolution,  so don't use this as a photo archive.  Save pictures to JPG and they show up separately in your note.  Save them in a PDF and you see the one-page top document,  not the content.
 
Scan a few things and look at them with your mobile and desktop devices.  You're bound to have more questions...
 
Good Luck!
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ncage

ncage 3

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Wow.  What a lot of questions in one hit.  Here's some comments I prepared earlier...

 

General method:
 
You can scan with anything as long as it can scan to a desktop folder on your PC.
 
PDFs are better than JPG (picture) scans,  and 300DPI is the maximum resolution you need to OCR.
 
Save to a "searchable" PDF if you can - that will be indexed by Evernote as soon as the file is uploaded.  Otherwise you have to wait for Evernote to OCR.  This way you know it's done.
 
If you have a Windows computer,  scan to one folder for editing/ renaming of files and create another Input Folder.  
 
Once you've finished with the scanned documents,  drag and drop the files to to Input Folder and they'll be sucked into Evernote.
 
There's no official 'import folder' function in the Mac client yet,  but various script options are available mainly here http://veritrope.com/code_type/evernote/
 
When you've scanned a picture/ document you need to name it something useful - try "yyyymmdd - type - source - keywords" where
  • yyyymmdd is the date of the document or picture,  not the date you scanned it
  • type is photograph / receipt / letter / user guide - what is the general type of the item you scanned
  • source is "where did this come from?" - the name of your bank / accountant / bar etc (or of the people in the pic)
  • keywords is - anything else that might help you find this in a year's time.
-And for the first week or two:  DO NOT scan and then shred things - you might want to re-do stuff as you learn the best way to do this...  
 
Pictures stored in Evernote seem to lose some resolution,  so don't use this as a photo archive.  Save pictures to JPG and they show up separately in your note.  Save them in a PDF and you see the one-page top document,  not the content.
 
Scan a few things and look at them with your mobile and desktop devices.  You're bound to have more questions...
 
Good Luck!

 

 

Sorry i know it was  ton of questions. Just want to be prepared when i get the scanner.

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JMichaelTX

JMichaelTX 4,117

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Hello everyone,

 

I've made up my mind i'm going to be getting a scansnap ix500 scanner and have quite a few general questions on scanning. I currently have a brother scanner that goes all the way up to 1200DPI and i'm always confused on what to scan at.

. . .

 

You have some great questions!  Most of them are not directly related to Evernote.

 

I'd suggest the following:

  1. Download and read the ScanSnap user's guide.
  2. Review the ScanSnap web site for scanning guidelines.
  3. Do a Google search on "scanning guidelines"
  4. When you get your scanner, run some tests on just a few documents to find out what works for you
    1. Use different quality of source documents
    2. Try different resolutions
    3. Try color vs greyscale vs B&W
    4. Other issues of concern to you

I have a SnapScap S1300i, which works very well.

Here's my default scanning profile:

  • Image quality:  Best (Color/Gray: 300, B&W: 600)

    (this may be higher than you need, if file size is of concern to you)

  • Color Mode:  Auto color detection
  • File Format:  PDF
  • Paper size:  Auto detect
  • Compression rate:  3 (mid point)

Most of these were the default (if I remember correctly) in the "Standard" Profile.

 

The only Evernote specific suggestion I would make is to OCR the document (PDF) PRIOR to uploading into Evernote.

  • This makes searching on the PDF in Evernote available almost immediately, and allow you to copy text from the PDF.
  • You can use the ScanSnap app OCR, but since I have Adobe Acrobat Pro (for other reasons), I use it.
  • Since I have an Evernote Premium account, with unlimited monthly upload allowance and a large max file size of 200 MB, I don't really worry that much about file size.  But then most of my documents are < 10 pages.  If I was scanning books or large documents >> 100 pages, I might feel different.

 

Your testing is the key -- only you really know all of your preferences and requirements.

Of course, you will most likely make some adjustments over time -- that's to be expected.

So, start slow, and examine your PDFs, both before you add to Evernote and after.  Do some Evernote searches to see if you get what you expect.  Make adjustments accordingly.

 

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

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