fxSCAN was created with the idea of an easy-to-use and intuitive, yet powerful and fast scanning software in mind. The result is a scanning software, with which you can manage with ease all scanning- related tasks via one program and one interface.
Scanning
fxSCAN supports a wide range of scanners by directly using the popular and free Betascan-drivers or an already installed ScanQuix®. Scanning itself requires you to set only the scan-mode, -resolution and -area, so you scan only what you want to. After scanning, the picture is in the main memory and you can proceed working with it.
PDF-Export
Digitalization of documents for flexible use, e.g. on websites or delivery via email, has become more and more important over the last few years.
Until now AMIGA-users could create PDF-documents from scans only with comparably high efforts, and then again, mostly uncompressed and therefore not suitable for delivery due to their filesizes. One "solution" for this problem was to send scans as image files, but printing these was tricky for users of other platforms (cut borders, print-out too small, format couldn´t be read, "gigantic" size on screen, etc.).
Over the last few years, the PDF-format has become a platform- independant standard format for the exchange of documents and can be viewed and printed without problems on a variety of systems. fxSCAN´s PDF-export now finally allows you to create a compressed PDF-file from a scan, with few mouseclicks, a friendly interface and in a couple of seconds.
Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
It was awaited for a long time, now its finally there: OCR on the AMIGA! fxSCAN contains an OCR-module (whose recognition-kernel is based on the free Linux-OCR gocr) since version 3.0. By continued development the already very good recognition-results will further improve in the future. For example the recognition-kernel´s version 0.3.5, which is used in fxSCAN 4.0, has vast improvements in the recognition of French and "Norwegian" characters and an overall improved character recognition.
The recognition of a page is very simple for the user, though. Just drag boxes around text columns and pictures and start the recognition process. Unknown or unrecognized characters are corrected afterwards and the final result is then saved as text- and/or HTML-file. If you use HTML-files, you can even embed pictures from the original, order the text in columns like in the original and save the font size information. If desired, the text can also be overworked automatically for further use: words seperated at the end of a line can be joined together automatically and line breaks can be removed. This is especially useful if you want to use the same text in a different layout or on a website! And thanks to PPC- support, OCR profits of the higher PPC-speeds.
Copying
Scan, print, result too dark, expensive ink wasted? Not with fxSCAN! The copying function is well thought through here. You can scan a preview before copying, perform brightness-, contrast- and gamma- corrections and then create a copy that fits your expectations. Who still needs conventional copy-machines then anyway?
Reworking
fxSCAN offers you a wide range of tools for reworking your scanning results. Supported by a realtime-preview you reach optimal results fast. No matter whether you want to cut pictures precisely, adjust the colors, optimize the use of colors, automatically improve your scanning results with the color profiles of the calibration software ICS or rotate, mirror, scale, blur or sharpen your scans, create a negative or a black&white version of your scan, fxSCAN assists you in your intention. On AMIGAs with PPC, these operations are by the way performed with full PPC-speed!
View & Print
Of course you can also view and print pictures in fxSCAN. When viewing them, you profit of the optimized viewing routines and get an overview fast. When printing, you can choose between using the driver systems of AmigaOS 3.1, 3.5/3.9 and Turboprint® and get your results on paper in short time.
Convert
By supporting many formats for loading and saving, the conversion between the fileformats is an easy task and done quickly with fxSCAN. Thanks to datatypes-support, you can also access nearly any image fileformat comfortably.
Availability
Available now, price £30, from FORE-MATT Home Computing on 08700 11 22 34 or at www.forematt.co.uk</P>