Some document scanning projects cannot be narrowed down to one specification or the other. For instance, if you’re trying to decide whether to have us scan your documents in color or black and white, you might find that there are some documents that need to be scanned in color while others need to be scanned in black and white. We have encountered circumstances just like this and, in fact, have had to come up with various ways to solve the problem based on the details of the projects.
There are many options to consider when capturing color and black and white within a project.
Scenario 1
In each box, there are several files, and each file usually has anywhere from a few to a dozen color photos. They need to be captured in color, so as the other documents in the box are scanned in black and white, the color photos are moved to another box and indexed so that the scanned images of the photos can be put back into the box for electronic delivery.
Scenario 2
Some files, such as licenses and applications, have small pictures taped to papers in the files. To remove the pictures and scan them separately in color would be cumbersome and inefficient. Toggle patch codes can solve this problem. As the box is prepped for scanning, our doc preppers can insert a page before and after the piece of paper that has the picture. At scan time, the scanner is configured to automatically switch to color capture when it encounters that special page. The succeeding page will be scanned in color, thus maintaining the quality of the photo. The toggle patch behind the page with the photo returns the scanner to black and white capture mode.
Scenario 3
Sometimes, the files require more scrutiny. A recent project had maps interspersed with other documents in the files. Our scanners processed the entire box in black and white, and when they came to a map, if the black and white didn’t provide enough detail, it was scanned as color and reinserted at the Quality Assurance stage. This solution made sense because the maps also could have been large enough that they had to be taken to our wide-format scanner individually.