Scanning software recommendation, compression alternatives and how do you estimate hard drive space needed for scanned documents and their file size

if the file size is an issue, you can scan them in black and white.
abby fine reader can help you put in text form :   http://www.abbyy.com/
as for the space needed, i would do a test run with different documents, to make an average estimation

I would also suggest the Abbyy FineReader. If you want to make sure that it's easy to get to the content of your scanned pages, you should save the files as PDF documents. You can specify to OCR the documents, this OCR information will also be stored in the PDF files. This will enable you to search through the files.

It's hard to calculate space for scanned images because it depends on the content, and on how clean the scans are. The same page will result in a much smaller file if you can cleanup the scan before it's compressed and saved. This would for example mean to run a despeckle routine and to get rid of scan artifacts (shadows, holes, ...). It also depends on teh resolution that you want to scan the documents in. What resolution to use depends on what you want to do with the documents. If you want to print them, you need at least 300 dpi to make the prints look good. If it's just for on screen viewing, you can go down to maybe 150 dpi. But this also depends on the content of your documents (e.g. font size).

Do you already have a scanner?

No, I do not have a scanner and would be open to any suggestions you have.  The scanned pages will be financial info like tax returns, accounting ledgers, etc. (not photos) and will range in size from 8x10 to irregular ledger size sheets like 11x17 or so.  Most, however will be 8x10 and some will have printing on both sides.  I suspect we will be scanning about 500-1000 pages a month.

I don't have any first hand experience with any current document scanners, but I hear good things about Fujitsu and Kodak scanners.

Hi,

Defenitelly Fujitsu Document Scanners !

Has for the space to allocate, the more the better, if you can't get to "crazy" values, then I guess a full glass scanning, no margins, scanned at 2400 DPI, which is my Highest resolution, takes up to 1,7 Gb in Color, and about 70 Mb in B&W Bitmap!

At 1200 DPI, should take 420 Mb Colour and 17.5 Mb in B&W Bitmap.

At 600 DPI, Which is on of the most common, takes up to 105 Mb Colour and 4.4 in B&W Bitmap.

At 300 DPI, which is the one I often use, 26,2 Mb in Colour and 1,1Mb in B&W Bitmap.

So, scanning at 300 DPI, TRUE Colour, 250 GB would hold about 9.500 images !

Best Regards !

A word of caution: Even though mcp_jon mentioned a bunch of really high resolutions, don't go overboard when selecting your scan resolution. For most documents 300dpi is more than enough. If you need to print the documents in very good quality again, then go for 600dpi for monochrome documents, for color 300dpi is still sufficient. More than 600dpi are only necessary if your source material actually has that resolution to start with.

Hi,

Any news ?

Best Regards !

Great answer.
Query:  if I am scanning say tax returns, and using an OCR software like Finereader, is it possible to import the entire tax return numbers right into a spreadsheet program like Excel or must this be done number by number manually?
Thanks.

Yes, it is !

Best Regards !

Yes, with Abbyy Finereader you can save direct to a number of different file formats once you have OCR'd a page.  With Finereader version 5, which I am using (now quite old), I have the possibility of saving to MS Word, MS Excel, Corel WordPerfect, Lotus WordPro, and also as RTF, PDF and HTML.   No doubt later versions of FineReader do even better.

I just tested it with saving a table of figures into Excel after OCR, and its done a good job.

thanks again.  good advice