Posts Tagged ‘photo scanning’

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iPhone Performs Document Photo Scanning On The Go

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

iPhone Performs Document Photo Scanning On The Go

Scanning Apps Turn Snapshots Of Documents Into PDFs  

docscanner_blog_ad These days, photo scanning has become an integral part of the modern “digital experience.” Though many people have digital cameras, most of us also have large collections of old family photos, and a professional photo scanning service like ScanDigital is the perfect way to preserve and share those memories. But what if you’re on the go, and you need a quick scan of a receipt, a contract, or other document? These situations pop up all too often. Perhaps you’re on a business trip, and you need to submit a hefty receipt for immediate reimbursement. Or maybe you have a contract that you need to sign and send off, but there’s no fax machine in sight. Or you have a printed document, and you need to turn it into a PDF before the big meeting starts in 10 minutes. You have What do you do?

Well, if you own an iPhone, you’re in luck, because Apple’s do-it-all wonder-toy has now added document photo-scanning to its list of features. A number of document scanning apps are currently available for the iPhone, including Scanner Pro, JotNot, and our top pick, DocScanner. Each of these apps has its unique idiosyncrasies, but they all perform some basic functions as on-the-go document scanners. JotNot ($3.99) does a particularly good job at fixing perspectives, if you initially took a photo of a document at an angle. Just launch the app, snap a photo of the document using the iPhone’s built-in camera, and then use the app’s onscreen corner markers to draw a blue box around the edges of the document. Even if the original photo shows a slanted receipt with skewed text and diagonal edges, the final image will look as if the photo was taken front-on, and can easily be attached in an email in a variety of formats.

Although JotNot does a good job at converting skewed documents into legible image files, the app’s main weakness is that it cannot convert those digital images into searchable PDF’s. DocScanner, on the other hand, uses text recognition and OCR technology to turn digital images of documents (even if you took them before you bought the app) into PDF’s that can be searched, annotated, and even edited. At $7.99, DocScanner is more expensive than its competitors, but it provides a significant improvement to image quality by fixing not only geometry, but also shadows, white balance, and sharpness. Upcoming features include the ability to add text fields, free draw­ings and sig­na­tures to doc­u­ments.       

 Check out the iTunes app store or www.docscannerapp.com for more information on document photo-scanning on the go with DocScanner.

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Picnik Free Online Digital Photo Editing

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Turn Your Digital Photos Into Works Of Art With Picnik

Picnik Online Digital Photo Editing – Anyone With Digital Photos Can Tweak, Fine-Tune, And Fiddle For Free

picnikWith the right tools, photo editing can be a lot of fun. When it comes to fine-tuning digital photos, the possibilities are limitless. Crop, resize, rotate. Add colors, filters, and special effects. Turn a casual snapshot into a work of art. Turn a family portrait into a holiday greeting card.

But until recently, if you wanted in on the photo-editing fun, you had to invest in expensive desktop applications such as Adobe Photoshop, which has long been the flagship software for digital photo editing. Although Photoshop remains the industry standard for professionals, digital photo editing has become popular among millions of regular folks who never dreamed of being artists or graphic designers, and who don’t want to spend several hundred dollars on professional editing software.

In 2005, a company called Picnik launched its online image editing software, which has become the Web’s most popular alternative to desktop image-editing applications like Photoshop. Anyone with a digital camera or access to photo scanning equipment can now enjoy Picnik’s advanced and powerful photo-editing tools, without paying a cent or installing a new program. The browser-based application exists completely online, and many features can be used for free. Premium versions of the software, which can be accessed for a fee (starting at just over $2 per month), offer more advanced features.

Picnik’s intuitive user interface makes photo-editing so easy that you don’t have to be a computer wiz to get great-looking results. Though not as feature-rich as a professional solution like Photoshop, Picnik boasts a simple user experience and slick design that have attracted nearly two million U.S. visitors to the site each month. The company also attracted the attention of the search-engine giant Google; last week, Google acquired Picnik. There have been no announcements as to Google’s plans for the Picnik image editing tool, but Picnik will remain up and operational with no immediate changes. It seems likely that Google might eventually turn Picnik into part of its Google Apps suite, or incorporate it into its popular online photo sharing site, Picasa Web Albums.

Though Google’s plans for Picnik remain unclear, the acquisition sounds like good news for anyone with a digital camera or photo scanning equipment. With Google’s worldwide infrastructure and world-class team of software engineers and designers, it seems like the sky is the limit for Picnik, and users can expect increased features and functionality in the future.

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Biometric Passports: Are They Really More Secure?

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

Biometric Passports: Are They Really More Secure?

Hackers Expose Airport Security Risks With Elvis Passport And Automated Photo Scanning Passport Machine

passportOn February 23rd, 2010, CNN published a story about two men who call themselves “ethical hackers.” In an effort to highlight weaknesses in current airport security measures, Adam Laurie and Jeroen Van Beek exposed how easy it is to fool a passport scanner with a fraudulent biometric chip. Laurie and Van Beek used a doctored passport at a self-serve passport machine in Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport to clear a very special passenger for travel. That passenger’s name was Elvis Presley.

Within seconds of approaching the passport scanner, passenger Elvis Presley was cleared for travel. A photograph of The King, which had been stored on a computer chip inside the doctored passport, even appeared on the display monitor as “Elvis” was granted permission to travel.

As Laurie and Van Beek have clearly shown with this experiment, automated airport security isn’t working.

Biometric passports, which are designed to increase security, are currently standard issue in the United States, Europe, and dozens of other countries from Iraq to Australia. Also known as e-passports, these passports differ from their traditional paper-only predecessors by including electronic microprocessor chips that store the carrier’s biometrics – unique physical characteristics that can identify a specific individual – embedded in the front or back cover, or center page, of the passports. The passport’s critical information, such as the carrier’s name and photograph, are both printed on passport’s data page in the traditional way, and stored inside the computer chip.

Currently, the most standardized biometrics used for this type of identification system are facial recognition and fingerprints. When a person applies for a new passport, his or her biometrics are digitized using photo scanning technology, and saved onto the microchip that is embedded in the passport. This technology has indeed made passports somewhat more difficult to fake, but Laurie and Van Beek have proved that biometric passports remain vulnerable to fraud, especially when they are checked by automated passport scanning systems instead of human beings.

Although most countries use a combination border control officers and automated passport scanning by computers, Laurie and Van Beek suggest that reliance on computers is unsafe. After all, no human border control officer would have approved Elvis Presley for travel without at least thinking twice about it. The automated scanners can check a traveler’s facial imagine by photo scanning his or her face and comparing it to the embedded photo in the computer chip. If the two match, the traveler can walk right through. The problem is that these chips are not invulnerable to tampering. Laurie told CNN that the combination of biometric passports and automated scanners has “actually made the borders weaker, not stronger.”

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IDC Survey Shows Photo Scanning On The Rise In U.S.

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

IDC Survey Shows Photo Scanning

On The Rise In U.S

Photo Scanning Part Of America’s “Expanding Digital Experience” 

IDC_2007On February 12th of 2010, The International Data Corporation (IDC) published the 2009 U.S. Consumer Photo Scanning Survey, which focuses on the use of key consumer imaging applications. This top-level study of digital camera, camera phone, and scanner owners contains the results of a nationwide survey that allowed IDC analysts to quantify how many images and video clips American users tend to capture, delete, print, and archive. According to the 14-page document, photo scanning is on the rise.

Headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts, The IDC is the world’s leading provider of marketing intelligence and advisory services for the consumer technology, telecom, and IT industries, and employs more than 1000 analysts in 110 countries. These analysts work together in teams to deliver high impact data and insight on technology and industry opportunities and trends around the world. A subsidiary of the world’s leading technology media, research, and events company (the International Data Group, or IDG), the IDC and its global team provides global, regional, and local expertise to help businesses and investors make educated market decisions. The corporation was founded in 1964 when a UNIVAC executive asked IDC founder Patrick J McGovern about the notable lack of market research information available on the burgeoning computer industry.

According to an M2 PressWIRE Via Acquire Media NewsEdge, The IDC’s most recent survey revealed some interesting facts about photo scanning. An analysis of the data about scanned photos has allowed IDC analysts to identify trends across a multitude of survey responses. Ron Glaz, program director of the Worldwide Digital Imaging Solutions and Services, summed up the IDC’s report, saying that “…consumers’ interest in converting their photo prints to digital will rise as their digital experience expands.” The data from the survey, which are presented by capture technology where applicable and by total respondents, include detailed information on the number of scanners owned per household, the number of photos scanned per month, the methods of archiving scanned pictures for long-term storage, and the percentage of images scanned at home, at retail photofinishers, and by professional photo scanning services. 

For more information on the 2009 Photo Scanning Survey, visit www.idc.com.

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Black History Month Celebrated With Photo Display

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Black History Month Celebrated With Photo Display

Classic UPI Photos On Display At Skokie Public Library

black historyBefore the days of photo scanning, digital cameras, and personal computers, it was all too easy for memories to be lost forever if photographs were damaged, misplaced, or destroyed. And that’s exactly what almost happened to a phenomenal collection of nearly 70,000 United Press International photos taken between the 1930s and the 1970s. These remarkable photos were rescued by United Press International photographer Henry A. Scheafer, who worked at UPI for 54 years before the company closed its doors in the 1970s.

When United Press International closed its offices, these stunning black-and-white photos, and thousands like them, were headed to the dumpster. Scheafer recognized their value, and took the collection to his home. Nearly 90 of the salvaged photos are now on display in Illinois, at the Skokie Public Library, where the celebration of Black History Month will continue through April 2nd. Shot by various UPI photographers across five decades, the photos on display at the Skokie Public Library represent a historical documentation of significant events in the lives of African Americans.

One photo shows Olympians Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe greeting one another on a track in Milwaukee in 1935. In another, Duke Ellington smiles with pride as he is named Ambassador of Goodwill in 1969, the same year he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Many such joyous photos adorn the walks of the Skokie Public Library’s main lobby and downstairs display areas. But upstairs, the photos depict more disturbing and sometimes shameful events.

Here, the sports figures and entertainers give way to more tragic subjects; these decidedly graphic photos document the struggle of African Americans to endure violent oppression and win for themselves the basic civil rights that were denied them for hundreds of years. There are haunting images of lynchings and riots. One photo shows Mississippi Sheriff W.J. Vaughan standing over the dead body of Albert Gooden in 1937. Another depicts Black Panther leader Huey Newton, as he tells the media that he plans to testify in a murder trial on behalf of his successor.

There has been pressure from historians and other enthusiasts to preserve the collection via digital photo scanning, but Scheafer’s daughter, who is the current owner of the collection, chooses to treat each photograph as a unique work of art, rather than just an “image.” It is certainly true that the photos, though remarkable on an individual level, become something more significant when viewed together as part of a collection, capturing some of the most triumphant, and most tragic, moments in African American history.

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Photo Scanning Used To Preserve George Washington’s Letters And Speeches

Monday, February 8th, 2010

This Presidents’ Day, Get To Know George Washington

The Papers of George Washington Project Uses Photo Scanning To Preserve And Share Washington’s Letters, Speeches

presidentsdayFor most of us, Presidents’ Day (or George Washington’s Birthday, as it is officially known) isn’t a huge holiday. Sure, it’s a great time for bargain-hunters to find 50%-off sales and reduced prices on everything from TV’s to cars, but George Washington’s Birthday usually doesn’t stir up the kind of large-scale family trips and grand celebrations that are common on holidays like Memorial Day, Labor Day, and even Veterans’ Day. Still, many Americans, especially history buffs and die-hard patriots, consider Presidents’ Day to be a holiday worthy of full-scale celebration.

Originally implemented by the United States Congress in 1880, George Washington’s Birthday was the first federal holiday to honor an American citizen. Currently celebrated nationwide on the third Monday of February (that’s the 15th, this year) George Washington’s Birthday gives all Americans the chance to honor the accomplishments of our nation’s first president, who has been known for over 200 years as the “Father” of the United States. Military personnel and veterans also have a chance to pay tribute to the man who created the Purple Heart, which was the first military badge of merit for the common soldier.

In order to preserve and commemorate the life and career of our nation’s “Father,” a grant-funded project in Virginia called The Papers of George Washington has been working since 1968 to publish a comprehensive edition of George Washington’s letters and other personal and professional documents. Established at the University of Virginia, under the joint auspices of the University and the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union, The Papers of George Washington aims to publish a complete edition of Washington’s correspondence, consisting of approximately ninety volumes. The project hopes to make the material “available not only to scholars but to all Americans interested in the founding of their nation.”

As part of the project, letters written to Washington, as well as letters and documents written by him, are now being digitized using photo scanning equipment, and then typed into a searchable format for indexing and cross-referencing. Photo scanning technology allows the original documents, which ordinarily are available for viewing only to scholars and historians, to be viewed by anyone, anywhere. So take some time this Presidents’ Day and get to know George Washington a little bit better. Read the Farewell Address that he gave shortly before leaving office or take a look at his letters, his portraits, or his home. As it turns out, he wasn’t just our first president; he was also a pretty interesting guy!

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Convert Photos To Digital To Capture Moments In History

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

  Baby Jessica Riveted The World; Convert Your Photos To Digital And Allow Your Story To Live On

 She Was Stuck In A Well For 58 Hours But Survived

  

Remember Baby Jessica, the 18-month-old toddler who fell in an abandoned water well in Midland, Texas?

 

No doubt millions of people around the globe do. Her image was plastered in countless newspapers and magazines, and on television screens, as people sat riveted by the story, following her through the 58-hour ordeal.

 

One look at the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo that depicted her rescue – of a rescue worker carrying a bandaged, badly injured baby to safety – and you instantly understand why. Jessica McClure (now Morales) fell down the well in October 1987 and became stuck in a pipe 22 feet down. The incident drew intense media coverage and lives on today on the Internet. It’s a poignant example of why we all should convert photos to digital; it’s a way to share such a global slice of history with generations to come.

 

Jessica is now married and a mother, but she’s still “Baby Jessica” to many. She went through more than a dozen surgeries and even a partial amputation of a foot after the accident. Her parents, who were teenagers when she was born, are now divorced.

 

Jessica and her family typically shy away from media attention, but their drama is too well-known to die. And it won’t, when you think of all the old footage and photos that can be preserved. Her life story lives on, since it is now so easy to convert photos to digital.

Jessica has kept the scars from the accident. Robert O’Donnell, the paramedic who rescued her, committed suicide eight years later. A police officer involved in the rescue, William Andrew Glasscock Jr., is now in prison on unrelated charges.

 

When Jessica turns 25 years old, she will be allowed to collect from a trust fund that may be worth up to $1 million. The money came from public donations, which arrived after she was rescued

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Still Asking: Why Scan My Photos? History Holds The Answer

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

Scan My Photos And Yours To Lock In The Past, Share With The Future

See What We’ve Learned From This Norwegian Girl’s Image

If you’re anything like us, you’re staring at this image, wondering, Who is this girl?

Her image, an ink-based photolithograph, was taken some time between 1890 and 1900. Although it looks similar to a regular photograph, upon closer inspection you can see it is made of many tiny dots.

She’s a poignant reminder of how important it is to preserve history and memories for generations to come. This image was taken more than 100 years ago. Without it and others similar to it, we would be left to wonder what Norwegians wore then. She’s the answer to all those who ask, “Why do I need to scan my photos?”

The girl pictured is from Hardangerfjord, Norway. The area is located in the country’s western half, and the fjord itself is 179 kilometers long and up to 800 meters deep.

In the photolithograph, she is staring off into the distance, not straight on. She looks thoughtful, perhaps pensive. What is she thinking? What is her name? We are left to wonder. We are glad, though, that her image and the cultural richness it represents are still with us to this day.

So now we have you convinced, but how about your friends and colleagues? Are they still asking, “Why do I need to scan my photos?” Call up this image for them, and read on to discover what else can be learned from the young maiden.

Her outfit is a traditional Hardanger woman’s bunad. Bunads are worn by both women and men, and can vary depending on a person’s family and region. The variations do share some commonalities, however; women sport a long-sleeve white shirt, vest, apron and skirt. Bunads are usually made of wool and embellished with jewelry. Today, Norwegians slip them on to celebrate special occasions, from baptisms and balls to weddings and confirmations. They may be worn with a marriage headdress, cape, shawl, scarf, bonnet and/or purse, and can be passed down to new generations.

But not every bunad gets passed down. Some are reconstructed or reproduced based on past designs, while others are inspired by them. Without images such as this, though, we would have no starting point.

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Scanning Photos To CD Preserves Our Nation’s History

Monday, July 6th, 2009

From Photos To CD, Newspapers Scanned Into Digital Form Make Excellent Reference Materials

An Early 20th Century Feature About A Battleship Is A Prime Example

News today happens as fast as you can snap a photo with your iPhone and send it to Twitter. But if you were a newsman 100 years ago, life was different. It didn’t move at so quick a pace. Newspapers didn’t even feature pictures until late into the 1800s, when Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst – two iconic newspaper men whose legacies live on – began running halftone photos to catch the attention of new readers.

It worked.

We’re lucky these newspapers are still around to peruse, though in digital form. While they may not stain your fingers with ink – a good thing! – they illustrate the importance of preserving history for future generations.

Scanning photos to CD saves memories, personal and public, that can later be shared with ease. In this Nov. 28, 1909, image of the North Dakota battleship, we can clearly see the vessel’s massive size, so huge it practically eclipses the city of New York (or at least a block or two). The pedestrians represent a mere fraction of its stature.

The USS North Dakota had a crew of 933. It was launched on Nov. 10, 1908, and commissioned April 10, 1910, in Boston. Four years later, the ship made its way down to Mexico. She returned north, to the East Coast, when the United States became involved in World War I. Additional travel took her to the Mediterranean and other parts of Europe before she was decommissioned on Nov. 22, 1923, and sold as scraps in 1931.

If not for scanning photos to CD, images such as this battleship and the overall newspaper pages would be lost. Thankfully, the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities have partnered to create the National Digital Newspaper Program, which supports the digitization of newspapers published between 1836 and 1922. This helps new and old Americans get to know our nation’s past.

It is difficult to imagine a time when digital photography wasn’t so prevalent, when it wasn’t around to offer instant satisfaction as it does now. Yet we can’t forget the journey of those who came before us. Scanning photos to CD is a surefire way to ensure history lives on.

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Adventures in Parenting- ScanDigital Giveaway!

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Adventures in Parenting is hosting a ScanDigital Giveaway for a $75 gift card- so hop over to the site and enter for your chance to win! All you need to do to enter is leave a quick comment on which of our services you need and tweet about it for an additional entry. Good luck!

Enter here: Adventures in Parenting

While you’re on the site, check out other posts from Katy Lee, the woman behind Adventures in Parenting. She tackles everything ranging from Get your kids off the computer without nagging to Initiation into manhood/womanhood: Rites of Passage and asks tough questions like Is abstinence realistic? As she says, “Parenting in my life and my passion…But raising “Good” kids is a challenge!”  

See Katy’s blog post below:

ScanDigital Giveaway!

June 23rd, 2009

Our old VCR just broke down. Are we the only ones who still own one of those dinosaurs? Ahhh…It has served us well, playing our collection of Disney Classics on VHS tapes – (Snow White, Fantasia, The Prince and the Pauper – I love those! Now that these are available on DVD, the tapes are obsolete.

And of course, we have our home movies on VHS – my son singing at Christmas and my daughter’s ballet recital, and even our wedding is still on a VHS tape! My husband even has old reel-to-reel tape of a Christmas past when he was growing up! (8mm or Super 8, who remembers what those were!)

Those precious memories, there they now sit in my cabinet…

It’s time for me to FINALLY convert those memories into digital format, not only to preserve, but to make accessible. It would make for great family nights to watch those tapes, to have a good laugh and to share our family history.

Since you know I am big on promoting family time, I am thrilled that  ScanDigital came along to offer you my readers a giveaway to do just that. ScanDigital is the premier photo and home movie transfer service. They convert old photos, slides, negatives, videos and reel to reel film to digital format, allowing you to effortlessly preserve, organize, share and enjoy your old memories again.  They can even convert your scrapbook into a CD/DVD, with a free online gallery to share your scrapbook with friends and family.

ScanDigital is giving away a $75 gift card to the lucky winner.

It’s very simple to enter:

**Go to ScanDigital’s really easy to navigate website, come back and leave a comment on which service you need.

**Optional for another entry in the drawing, tweet about this giveaway with @RaisingKids, and a link to this post.  (It’s easy to set up a Twitter account if you don’t have one.)

Pass this along to friends and family. I know we all know people with old photos and tapes around that would love ScanDigital.

This giveaway will end on June 30, 2009 at midnight PST. Shipping addresses outside of U.S. get the free product but pays for shipping. Winner will be chosen randomly by random.org. Make sure you leave me a valid email to contact you.

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