There is a Scanner with an automatic sheet feeder in LH428 attached to the PC named blindcat that can be used by CS faculty, staff, and students. The Scansoft Omnipage software is installed on this machine and can be used to scan documents as an image or using Optical Character Recognition (OCR).

To start the program:

On your desktop and on the Start Menu, you will see Scansoft Omni page 14 Pro. Double-click to start the program.

To scan a text document with optical character recognition:

In Omni page, you will see a collection of buttons below the menu bar. If you would like to change the resolution, brightness, contrast and other scanning settings, on the menu bar click on Tools, Options, Scanner. The one on the left has "1,2,3" and is for automatic processing. By clicking the "1,2,3" button, the document will be automatically scanned, checked for character recognition and then will end by prompting you to either add more pages to your document or save the document. You can use the drop down box below the file type box in the save file dialogue to save in a variety of formats, including PDF.

To scan a graphic or scan any document as a picture:

Click the second button from the left below the menu bar for the first step of the scanning process. The drop down box below the "1" button lets you select what type of document you are scanning, either color, black and white, or grayscale. Once you click the "1" button, the scanner will begin scanning your document. Once the first page is done, you will be asked if you would like to add additional pages. If you would like to change the resolution, brightness, contrast and other scanning settings, on the menu bar click on Tools, Options, and Scanner.

Once your document is scanned, you will click on the "3" button to save your document as a file. In the file save dialogue are options for file types, including jpeg, pdf and Word files. You should save your files to your CS home directory, as files saved locally will not be backed up and will be periodically deleted.

FAQ:

I'm trying to scan a document at Blindcat, but the Omni page program does not have scanner as a source.

Answer: Click on the menu bar on Tools and Scanner, click next and select the scanner from the list of available sources. Once you've done this, the scanner will always be selected as the source.

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