ScanR knows its black from white

ANNOYINGLY-NAMED US outfit, scanR has redeemed itself for its crimes against tasteful use of upper and lower case lettering, by inventing a cracking application, reports Nikkei.net.

The sTooopiDly named company creates applications that simplify the process of capturing information on your camera phones. Now it has created an imaging technology that converts printed colour documents, captured on your mobile, into PDF files.

Say you take a picture of a colour poster advertising Eric Clapton’s biography (which my wife just happens to be selling. Drop into Waterstones in Kingston, and you can pick up a free plectrum). The data would be sent to scanR's server and stored as a digital document pretty similar to the original. Namely, it’s in colour.

Up until now, colour documents had to be converted to black-and-white format. The application distinguishes between text and photographs in colour documents and treats them differently.

Text and photos are thus digitised using different processes. Anything identified as a photograph is reproduced with automatic correction for background noise and brightness. Characters are recorded, but as text data rather than as images. µ

L'INQ
www.scanr.com

PS. First 14 people to email me get a free Eric Clapton poster (I’m chucking them out otherwise)