Scanning documents with Image Capture

When I scan signed documents sent to me, the size of the scanned document is very large like 3.6MB. How can I scan with a lower dpi so the document won't be as large, but still be legible? I would like to scan more then one document to a PDF instead of having a separate scan for each document but don't know how to lower the size of the scanned documents. I have an Epson WF-3640 printer.

In general I've found that scanning from the computer always gives me freakishly large documents, so with my Canon all-in-one, I use a USB stick and when scanning tell it to scan directly to the stick in B&W or color and the images are very reasonable size and quality. You might want to do that since your printer has a USB port..

I guess you might have Image Capture figured out by now, but for you and future followers of this thread, here are some links on the "hidden" functions of Image Capture.

Incidentally, these all show the ability to set the size, resolution and so on of scanned documents in order to get the image and its size to your liking.

http://www.macworld.com/article/2867001/exploring-the-many-miracles-of-image-capture.html
https://soundsupport.biz/2015/10/18/how-to-scan-using-image-capture/

Ian

I guess you might have Image Capture figured out by now,

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And adding to Ian's post, make sure the Image Capture window that it and many AIO scanner apps use, has the Details side panel showing. Oftentimes it just shows the basic defaults and with no options showing or available.





- Patrick
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Evidently I did not have image capture figured out. Was not set to A4. Set dpi to 150 from 50. i was using pdf instead of tif. Text document much sharper in tif then pdf.
Scanning to USB on my Epson indeed did give a smaller size then straight to the computer.
This is why i like Mac forums so much. All you guys have the knowledge i lack and your willingness to share is much appreciated.

Pete C

Scanning to USB on my Epson indeed did give a smaller size then straight to the computer.

Click to expand...

Just to nit-pick a bit and I hate to spoil your party and thoughts, but that file is probably about the same size but as the flash/thumb drive is smaller than your Mac's storage volume, the allocation blocks that the file is stored in is probably smaller and the file size may then usually appear smaller. And even then, there will be some "wasted space" but there's nothing you can do about it except not to worry about it. Bloated files yes, but that's another different topic. :Blushing:

http://www.applexsoft.com/glossary/hfs-plus.html





- Patrick
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Actually it's not...the PDF, for example, created by the printer is going to be smaller than the one created by Image Capture or whatever software is used and it has nothing to do with block size variations..

Yes, I use Image Capture to load my pictures from my camera to Bridge in Photoshop and I learned it from this forum....

Actually it's not…the PDF, for example, created by the printer is going to be smaller than the one created by Image Capture or whatever software is used

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Opps, and OK, I forgot they seemed to have used a different file type format and other settings when saving.




- Patrick
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The file will then be much smaller.

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Yup, you're quite right as I just tried it on a pdf file.

And so is Apple correct, and a huge big understatement when they say:
When compressed, the PDF may be of lower quality than the original.

lower quality = God awful and blurry and a lot of seemingly wasted white space with the trial I did.

But it is definitely a smaller resulting file size!!!

I think I'll try again a bit later on a different pdf sample and see if things improve a bit.





- Patrick
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pm-r said:

Yup, you're quite right as I just tried it on a pdf file.

And so is Apple correct, and a huge big understatement when they say:
When compressed, the PDF may be of lower quality than the original.

lower quality = God awful and blurry and a lot of seemingly wasted white space with the trial I did.

But it is definitely a smaller resulting file size!!!

I think I'll try again a bit later on a different pdf sample and see if things improve a bit.





- Patrick
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Click to expand...

Must be a setting somewhere that is different, I have been doing this for years with my bills and statements I scan in every month and a ton of manuals that have drawings, pictures and charts and I have never once seen them look any worse than the original. I'm not at the computer now to look for anything that might need to be changed.

I did a little poking around in Preview since I planned to mention this in the video chat tonight plus it has been some time since I used that filter. Here's what I've noticed so far:

1. Once you choose the reduce file size filter there are no other setting to change as far as I can tell. Some other filters for example let you change the level of compression.
2. Some files undergo a significant level of compression. A test jpg for example stated at 269 k. When the same image is converted to pdf using Preview it is 270+ k without the reduce file size filter. With the filter the resulting pdf was 29 k. I suspect that the more graphically intensive a file is the larger the change in file size might be.
3. The smaller pdf did not seem to have more white space and still had a very usable image quality. The test image I used was one that would not necessarilly show off a lot of image degradation if it occurred.