What is Scanning?

Scanning is the process of taking an original image i.e. film negatives, documents, drawings, photographs etc and converting the image into digital information. This information may then be viewed on a computer screen, re-printed (sometimes to a larger size) or modified by software. It is sometimes referred to as "Imaging" or "Digitising".

So, why do we need a Bureau to Scan our Documents?

Home or small office scanners will happily deal with small quantities of standard size documents or prints but more specialised equipment is required for scanning large quantities, large format or high resolution items. Large format items include drawings, photographs, point of sale displays, posters, maps etc. High resolution scanning is often used for microfilm and colour prints where the final printed image is required to be many times larger than the original image.

What sort of Scanning does Hdi do?

Hdi scans all types of documents, including large format, all types of microfilm, legal documents e.g. wayleaves, commercial documents e.g. invoices, project files containing mixed drawings and other documents. We scan in mono, greyscale and colour. We convert greyscale to mono, raster to vector, vector to raster and most file formats to others of your choice. We can automatically batch scan or scan documents individually. We also provide high resolution scanning of transparency negatives in mono or colour.

What types of Traditional Media can be Scanned?

Documents may be on paper, polyester film, linen, tracing paper, negatives, transparencies, photographs etc, and all of these can be easily scanned.

What is wrong with Retaining the Traditional Storage Media?

All traditional means of storage media degrade with time due to use, dirt, loss and ageing and this usually incurs costs at the same time! All physical media like paper, polyester, linen, colour prints and negatives are susceptible to fire, water, or physical loss. Physical media may also require a large storage area and there is the more likely risk of loss by miss filing on return to the archive system.

Only one person is able to view the document at a time (unless more copies are made) and the image size may be too small or too large for the current purpose. Unfortunately, we often need to keep the data for long periods for example, personnel records, e.g. expense forms are required by law to be held for seven years after an employee leaves.

Is it Expensive?

Scanning has historically been considered as an expensive luxury. Nowadays the cost of scanning is low and well within the means of the smallest companies. In addition, digital storage has lots of other benefits that off-set the initial cost of scanning.