Scan
Ricoh Aficio MP1350
What Is Color Dropout?
Color dropout is a scanning feature that, as the name suggests, removes a specific color from a scanned image. Color dropout can be carried out either at the hardware before
data transmission or on the desktop using software after data transmission. The benefit of performing color drop- out at the device stage is that the bandwidth associated with the file now decreases dramatically due to the re- moval of much of the image data. This bandwidth reduc- tion puts less strain on the network and can have a marked effect on the data transmission speed and time-
Who Uses Color Dropout?
In short, anyone who processes forms will probably bene- fit from color dropout technology: financial institutions processing loan applications, insurance companies proc- essing insurance claims, law firms removing highlighting from discovery documents, government departments processing tax rebates, immigration requests, grant sub- missions, schools processing bubblesheet test sheets, and others.
Forms often incorporate a background color within their design to allow for easier navigation and improved com- pletion accuracy. While the use of color makes
forms easier to read and complete, it adds an additional burden when scanning the results into the business proc- ess automation system used to analyze the completed forms. The data found within the forms only needs to be collected in black and white through processing by OCR (optical character recognition) or ICR (intelligent charac- ter recognition) software.
From that point on, the form is converted into binary data and routed to a database or document management sys- tem where it becomes part of the electronic workflow.
Rival MFPs can offer
Left: Original form with color background for easier navigation.
Middle: Form scanned in Monochrome mode without color dropout is hard to read and prone to image capture errors.
Right: Form scanned using Color Dropout mode is now easy to read and delivers high image capture accuracy.
Left: This is an original document with highlighting.
Middle: Original scanned in Monochrome mode results in highlighted areas being unreadable.
Right: Original scanned with color dropout renders the document instantly usable with no human intervention required
Color Dropout Productivity
In theory, color dropout could have an impact in two areas of scanning: the scanning speed and the overall time to get the color removed before data transmission can begin.
BERTL looked into this. We scanned 50 pages of a com- pleted, standard government tax forms, running the same job in both Monochrome Text mode and Color Dropout mode.
We were pleasantly surprised to find that there was no slow down in the scanning speed when color dropout was ap- plied. This means that the process will not be adding to the cost burden of the company in terms of human intervention time. We were even more pleasantly surprised to see that the data transmission time dropped 30 percent when we applied color dropout and resulted in a bandwidth reduction of 42 percent.
While these figures will obviously change from form to form, depending upon the level of color dropout out, these figures are a guide to the potential time and bandwidth savings that a company could possibly achieve.
Copyright © 2006 MCA Internet, LLC dba BERTL. | 13 November 2006 |
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