Increasing scan Size

[Connie]

I'm trying to scan a newspaper article and send it as an attachment. The
print is way too small to read. I've tried increasing the size within the
document itself using MS Works as well as Open Office and it doesn't make it
clearer. I've also tried increasing the size on my copier and that doesn't
help. Any suggestions?

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Connie.

Can you scan it into Paint and Resize it there?

If you have tried resizing it in Works and it doesn't become clearer, you
might need a scanner with finer resolution. Otherwise, you may just be
making blurred text bigger - and blurrier. :>(

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64

 

[+Bob+]

Hi, Connie.

Can you scan it into Paint and Resize it there?

If you have tried resizing it in Works and it doesn't become clearer, you
might need a scanner with finer resolution. Otherwise, you may just be
making blurred text bigger - and blurrier. :>(

RC

As RC said - scan at high resolution. 300dpi should do it. If you can,
scan as a TIF file instead of JPG.

You can also resize in a Graphics program. Paint is not very capable.
A better graphics program will have several re sizing algorithms - one
of them will be better than the others. Also, re sizing to an even
multiple will work better (e.g. 200% is better than 190%).

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I'm trying to scan a newspaper article and send it as an attachment. The
print is way too small to read. I've tried increasing the size within the
document itself using MS Works as well as Open Office and it doesn't make it
clearer. I've also tried increasing the size on my copier and that doesn't
help. Any suggestions?

When you scan the document, what kind of file do you create? What's
its "extension," the last three characters of the file name, after the
dot?

Presumably you are creating a .jpg file, or some other kind of graphic
image. You can view the graphic image at different sizes, depending on
what viewing software you use, and even change the size of the image.
But just making a scanned image bigger will make the text within it
blurrier and harder to read. Office programs are unlikely to help at
all.

When you want to be able to read text within a scanned image, what you
should almost always do is change that graphic image into a text
document. You do that with an OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
program. Depending on your scanner, it may come with a light version
of an OCR program, or you may want to buy one. There are several good
choices of OCR programs. I use and like OmniPage, but there are others
at least as good.

 

[Connie]

Thanks so much for all the suggestions. I will give them all a try.

 

[Pflueger]

I don't think you have the problem you think you are having. First, you may
have an email function on your scanner that allows you to email the file
directly -- sometimes this is a good way. Second, you can usually (unless
your scanner was a Flintstone model) adjust the size of the output file
before you scan (it should say what the size is being scanned and give you
choices to resize for the output).

But actually it shouldn't matter to the recipient of your attachment because
they have to open it with an image reader anyway, which has the ability to
zoom in for reading clarity, or to resize the image in order to save it
larger.

Hope this helps. (Why post this to a VISTA newsgroup? --just curious).

pflu

Thanks so much for all the suggestions. I will give them all a try.