Kodak conducted extensive research on the use of colour in business documents. Research shows that colour contained is a key component with most business documents— graphics, stamps, highlighting, annotations, background colour, and colour lines, all convey meaning and add value to the document.

Portion of actual business document scanned in colour

Portion of actual business document scanned in black and white

Let’s face it: until now, affordable colour scanning was not available in the document imaging marketplace. As a result, vendors and end-users have convinced themselves that black and white images are all that’s needed….we’ve all accepted that compromise. Now, there is no need to compromise! Examine the images above and judge for yourself.

Documents scanned in colour:

• more closely represent the original,
• are better-looking…
• and therefore easier to view and read,
• convey important information that is sometimes lost in bi-tonal scanning,
• best represent the world in which we live.

The Kodak Digital Science^TM colour Scanners capture full 24-bit colour, which eliminates the need for traditional image quality settings (contrast and threshold) across a wide range of mixed documents. As a result, pre-scan sorting and rescans, the costliest part of capture, can be dramatically reduced, or even eliminated. This capability alone can easily cost-justify the additional 25% price of the colour scanner.

Colour images can also improve the productivity of forms processing and workflow applications, and make indexing and retrieval easier.

The colour science of document scanning, perfect by Kodak

The company that pioneered colour imaging with Kodachrome Film, and today supplies media to the motion picture and graphic arts and printing industries knows quite a bit about colour science. Kodak leveraged its colour expertise, going to great lengths to assure that the performance of its colour-enabled document scanners would live up to the company's reputation.

The colour imaging chain employed in Kodak Digital Science Colour Scanners has four main steps. It begins with customised optics, specifically designed by Kodak for the purpose of high speed document capture.

The lens is matched by a tri-linear Charged Couple Device (CCD) sensor developed and manufactured by Kodak. It was originally designed for 35mm colour film scanning and provides an excellent dynamic range.

Colour image processing, the third step, is made up of multiple steps.

Dynamic, on-the-fly, auto colour balancing compensates for any variation in illumination as the light bulb ages, preventing colour shifts.

Pixel Correction normalises the CCD sensor's sensitivity down to the individual pixel level to smooth out the colour response curve.

Colour Correction matches colours to the sRGB colour space used in PC monitors for true-appearing colour rendition.

Colour Conversion converts the image data to the YCC colour space for further processing.

Image Sharpening performed on the Y data (luminance or brightness) uses a patent Kodak algorithim that maximises image quality and detail.

Compression to JPEG format using unique quantisation tables developed by Kodak compresses colour data while leaving the grayscale data untouched.

At the end of this onboard imaging chain are colour JPEG images optimised for viewing on user monitors, as true to the originals as possible, ready to send to the host application.

Coupled to a robust, reliable document transport system, this imaging chain makes Kodak Digital Science Colour Scanners leaders in the document imaging industry.

Learn more about Kodak Digital Science 3590C Colour Scanner, Colour and Black-and-White capabilities in the one scanner, or Kodak's latest scanner the Kodak Digital Science Scanner 4500, a 24 bit Colour DUPLEX scanner.