Document Imaging

[Paul]

Hi,

Not really the right place for this post but I can't find a group dedicated
to Microsoft Office Document Imaging (MODI) so please forgive me trying my
luck here as I've found you're a very clever bunch!

I have a client who recieves documents in TIF format (they are scans of
articles). She prints these documents to paper, then scans them to turn them
into PDF. Obviously I have recomended simply printing these to PDF rather
than messing around with printing and scanning (as this is time consuming
and I believe results in a poorer quality PDF).

My client is concerned that the original TIF files are protected in some way
(expire after a certain period of time) and that directly creating a PDF
could transfer that protection to the PDF file (so that it would eventually
expire).

Question 1
I am 99.9% certain that you cannot put 'rights management' on a TIF file (to
prevent then number of copies you can print or to set an expiry date) - but
can someone who knows more about TIF files confirm this?

Question 2
If I am wrong and TIF files can be protected in this way, is there any way
that this protection could be carried over to a PDF generated by using a PDF
Printer driver? There do not appear to be any security settings on the
resulting PDF files.

Question 3
With the TIF file format and MODI I can OCR the scanned file such that I can
then search for terms within the scanned document. The OCR information is
lost when I convert to PDF and the free Adobe reader does not appear to have
any OCR capabilities. Can PDF support OCRing and then searching a scanned
image like MODI/TIF can do? If so, what tools do I need?

Many thanks,

Apologies again for posting this here - if you know of a better group for
this, please let me know...

Paul

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You might try microsoft.public.word.drawing.graphics if you don't get a
response here.

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hi Paul

I have a client who recieves documents in TIF format (they are scans of
articles). She prints these documents to paper, then scans them to turn them
into PDF. Obviously I have recomended simply printing these to PDF rather
than messing around with printing and scanning (as this is time consuming
and I believe results in a poorer quality PDF).

My client is concerned that the original TIF files are protected in some way
(expire after a certain period of time) and that directly creating a PDF
could transfer that protection to the PDF file (so that it would eventually
expire).

Question 1
I am 99.9% certain that you cannot put 'rights management' on a TIF file (to
prevent then number of copies you can print or to set an expiry date) - but
can someone who knows more about TIF files confirm this?

Question 2
If I am wrong and TIF files can be protected in this way, is there any way
that this protection could be carried over to a PDF generated by using a PDF
Printer driver? There do not appear to be any security settings on the
resulting PDF files.

Question 3
With the TIF file format and MODI I can OCR the scanned file such that I can
then search for terms within the scanned document. The OCR information is
lost when I convert to PDF and the free Adobe reader does not appear to have
any OCR capabilities. Can PDF support OCRing and then searching a scanned
image like MODI/TIF can do? If so, what tools do I need?

I have no idea about TIFF protection, but would be somewhat sceptic
myself. I'd try the geeks in comp.text.pdf.

2cents
Robert

 

[Glenn Widener]

Hi Paul

Of course.

TIFF has no stinkin' rights management (the most bogus concept in PDF).

I'm sure that at least one of the $29.95 products that easily defeat PDF
rights management (by simply reading and rewrinting the file!) could just as
easily put back in any rights you wanted to apply.

Yes, various OCR packages output searchable text to PDF files. As does our
SwiftConvert utility (www.swiftview.com) that converts TIFF, PCL, and HPGL to
TIFF, PDF, etc.
As far as I can tell, Microsoft has not published their private extension to
tiff to embed searchable text. That's why when you convert it this
information is lost.
I'm about to request the spec for Microsoft's extension, so that
SwiftPublish can transfer this hidden searchable text to PDF.

 

[Paul]

Hi Glenn - the longdocs group comes through yet again!

Thanks for eliminating my 0.1% doubt on Q1. I wasn't clear on Q2 that what I
wanted was to remove the rights management but your answers cleared up that
for me as well.

As it turns out the user was sitting only one floor away from a guy who
manages an enterprise document management system so having discovered this
I've put the two of them in touch (Typical joined up corporate thinking and
on-the-ball IT dept! I dread to think how much time has been lost and how
many trees have been felled to print and scan dozens of documents per day
over the last four years).

Looks like the enterprise system can do the automated TIF to pdf and
protected pdf to unprotected pdf transfers that are required and I was
thinking of programming MODI to acheive. I don't believe the system embeds
searchable OCRd text into the file but I'll try to have a word in the doc
management guy's ear about that and mention your product when I next get a
chance.

Thanks

Paul