Camera Positioning & Lighting Requirements

PageCam 6/8/00 2:37 PM Pagina 5

CAMERA POSITIONING & LIGHTING REQUIREMENTS

Tripod

Screw the camera onto the tripod, then point it downwards for scanning printed material with PageCam.

•Extend the tripod legs to the appropriate length (see below) and spread them evenly apart.

•Point the camera straight down for best scanning results. Do this by tilting the tripod head fully forward, and use the centre line on top of the camera for left/right correction.

•Aim the camera downward between two legs to avoid one of the legs showing in the scanned image.

•Turn the black ring to lock the head.

Camera height above desktop surface

Always choose the camera height above your document according to the text size of the scanned material. Since PageCam uses a fixed scanning resolution of 640x480 pixels with this camera, OCR results will improve if you zoom in on the text by retracting the tripod legs, thereby increasing the scan resolution for the text.

FOR OPTIMUM OCR RESULTS

•Optimum height for scanning a normal office document is 15 cm from document to camera lens. This will make it possible to capture approximately 1/4 of an A4 page.

•Alter the height as needed for your particular requirements, i.e. move camera closer for smaller fonts, further away for large fonts / large area.

•Ensure image is well focused: after altering camera height, check and adjust focusing accordingly.

•Ensure good lighting conditions (see below).

TIP: OCR Quality

For maximum OCR quality, adjust the length of the tripod legs so that the column of interest fills the whole image width.

Focus

Rotate the lens ring to focus the image. This will usually be necessary whenever you change the camera’s height above the scanned material.

Lighting

The lighting of the original affects image quality. Always use bright, diffuse lighting and avoid creating shadows and reflections on the original.

TO ACHIEVE GOOD LIGHTING

•Plenty of light

•Diffuse lighting (indirect daylight, light from multiple sources)

•No reflections on original

•Original evenly lit

•Avoid shadows

TIP: Camera Settings dialogue box

PageCam automatically adjusts the camera settings for resolution and frame rate to deliver maximum image quality. However the brightness control under the OptionsCamera Settings panel may sometimes need adjustment.

TIP: Curved originals

Keep originals flat during scanning to ensure all parts of the image are in focus. Note that curved originals may cause unwanted light reflections as well as loss of focus.

USING PAGECAM

PageCam is a unique program that enables you to capture graphics and optically recognise text and numbers straight off hardcopy pages into electronic documents and spreadsheets, using your PC camera.

PageCam will copy a paragraph, a single word, a sentence, a short phrase, an illustration or the entire window contents. Information is selected ‘word-to-word’, just as in a word processor or image editor, by dragging across text or graphics. Once it’s selected, you just need to copy it, by dragging or by pasting, into your preferred program.

And yes — all the textual information is already recognised for you by PageCam behind the scenes!

							OCR for Text copy
							Line drawing
							Colour Images
1.	Start PageCam	The live camera image is					displayed at start-up. If not, click
		on	to unfreeze the image.
2. Aim the camera		Point the camera (downwards) towards the object you want
		to copy. Adjust the height if necessary.
3.	Focus the live image	Turn the lens ring to focus the image.
4.	Check image quality	Check the lighting and the resulting image quality.
5.	Rotate	Use the rotate buttons					to rotate the image right side
		up. Text can be optically recognised with a slant of up to
		10 degrees left or right.
6.	Set language	Set the appropriate language for text recognition in the
		Options menu.
7.	Freeze the camera image	Click		to freeze the camera image and to start processing
		the image and OCRing the text.
8.	Colour, B&W or Text	Click on		,	or	to select your copy mode for colour
		images, line drawings or text.
9.	Select words or image	Drag your mouse over the text or select part of the image
		you want to copy.

10.Copy&Paste or Drag&Drop Click on to copy your selection, or Drag & Drop the selection to your preferred application. Hold down the Ctrl key to Drag & Drop images.

11. Repeat, or go live again	Select another part of the image for copying, or click	to
	go live for capturing the next image.