To capture paper documents as PDF files, you first scan them using the import scan feature in Acrobat 6. The steps for doing this are quite straightforward:
1. Turn on your scanner and position the first sheet of the document correctly on its glass.
2. Launch Acrobat 6, and if you want to add the pages you’re about to scan to a particular PDF document, open that document in Acrobat.
3. Choose File➪Create PDF➪From Scanner or click the pop-up menu on the Create PDF Task button and select From Scanner.
The Create PDF From Scanner dialog box opens, as shown in Figure 6-1.
4. In the Scanner area of the dialog box, select the name of your scanner and the driver it uses (if the device listed is not the one you want to use, select its name and driver in the Device drop-down list) and indicate whether the device should scan one side (the default) or both sides of the paper.
Select Double-sided in the Format drop-down list if you need to scan both the front and back of the pages.
5. If you have a PDF document open in Acrobat at the time you choose File➪Create PDF➪From Scanner, you have a choice in the Destination area of the Create PDF From Scanner dialog box between the Open New PDF Document option and the Append to Current Document option.
Note that if you have no PDF document currently open, the Append to Current Document radio button is grayed out. If a PDF document is cur-rently open, Acrobat selects the Append to Current Document radio button by default, and you must remember to select the Open New PDF Document radio button if you want to avoid adding the scanned pages to the end of the current document.
6. Click the Scan button.
Figure 6-1:
Select the scanner, page format, and destination in the Create PDF From Scanner dialog box.
When you click the Scan button in the Create PDF From Scanner dialog box, the scanning software used by your particular brand of scanner opens its own window in which you can select the scanning settings and often preview the scanned page. Figure 6-2 shows the controls in the ScanWise window used by my Agfa scanner that opens when I click the Scan button in the Create PDF From Scanner dialog box.
When choosing the scanning settings, you want to select the lowest resolution quality for the type of document that stills gives you an acceptable image in the final PDF file. The reason for this is the higher the resolution, especially when dealing with color images, the larger the file, and at high resolutions with lots of colors, you can end up with an enormous document.
When selecting the scanning settings, keep these tips in mind:
When scanning black-and-white images and text-only documents, you must set the resolution between 200 and 600 dpi (dots per inch). When scanning color images and text, you must select a range between 200 and 400 dpi. This is because the Paper Capture plug-in that recognizes the text in a scanned document and converts it to searchable and editable text can only process documents scanned in these ranges.
Figure 6-2:
Select the scanning settings with the software installed for your type of scanner.
For most documents, scanning at a resolution of 300 dpi produces the best paper captures. If, when using the Paper Capture plug-in, you find that the document contains many unrecognized words, or if the docu-ment has a lot of very small text (9 points or smaller), try scanning at a higher resolution (up to 600 dpi).
Scan in black and white whenever possible.
When scanning color or grayscale pages containing large type, try scan-ning at a resolution of 200 dpi for faster processing with Paper Capture.
Avoid using dithering or halftone scanner settings. These improve the appearance of photographic images but make it difficult for the Paper Capture plug-in to recognize text.
When scanning text printed on colored paper, increase the brightness and contrast by approximately 10 percent. If your scanner supports color filtering capability, select a filter that drops out the background color.
If your scanner has a manual brightness control, use it to get the letters as clean as possible. If some of the thicker characters in the document are touching when scanned, try using a higher brightness setting and scanning again. If some of the thinner characters are too separated in the scan, try a lower brightness setting next time.
After selecting your scanning settings in your scan software (and previewing the page if your scan software offers this feature), start scanning the page by clicking the Scan button (or its equivalent). When your scanner finishes scan-ning the page, Acrobat displays an Acrobat Scan Plug-In dialog box (similar to the one shown in Figure 6-3) that prompts you to get the next page ready for scanning or to signal that you’re done scanning.
When this dialog box appears, you take one of the following three actions, depending upon what type of document you’re scanning:
If you’re scanning a single-page document, click the Done button in this Acrobat Scan Plug-In dialog box.
Figure 6-3:
Click the Next button to scan the next page in the document.
If you’re scanning a double-sided document, turn the paper over in the scanner and then click the Next button.
If you’re scanning single-sided pages but your paper document contains multiple pages, replace the first page on the scanner with the second page and then click the Next button.
When you click the Done button, Acrobat closes the Acrobat Scan Plug-In dialog box and displays the page you just scanned in the Acrobat Document window. When you click the Next button, Acrobat closes the Acrobat Scan Plug-In dialog box and returns you to your scanning software, where you can start scanning the backside of the page or the next page by clicking its Scan button.
For a multipage document, you continue the process of clicking the Next button in the Acrobat Scan Plug-In dialog box, replacing the current page with the next page on the scanner, and then clicking the Scan button in your scan-ner software. When you finish scanning the last page in your document, click the Done button in the Acrobat Scan Plug-In dialog box to see the first page of your new PDF document displayed in Acrobat.