Vol.1/August 1997

Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Acrobat Capture 2.0, and Adobe PageMill

Acrobat Capture 2.0 Scores High Marks
On June 9, 1997, Adobe Systems announced Adobe Acrobat Capture 2.0 for Windows(R) and Windows NT.(R) Read on, or visit the Adobe Web site to learn more about this exciting new document capture product and how it enables businesses to bring legacy paper documents back to life on the Web.

Solutions

Acrobat Capture:The Paper-to-Web Solution
After the release of Acrobat 1.0, our customers' major feedback was 'provide higher throughput, support for Windows NT, and give us programmatic access to your server,' " says Anna Kjos, Acrobat Capture 2.0 product manager. Acrobat Capture 2.0 addresses all of these concerns and also provides improved page recognition, enhanced reviewing capabilities, and "out-of-the box" support for most popular scanners.

Acrobat Capture Revolutionizes OCR and Document Conversion
Most desktop OCR products are designed for repurposing text-for example, scanning a single document and then modifying text to create a new one. These products have serious disadvantages: Text generated is rarely error-free, and often the OCR software can access only the fonts installed on the system being used, yielding a document that doesn't look anything like the original. Most high-volume electronic document conversion products aren't much better. The electronic files produced are large and often are stored in a dual file format (a TIFF image and a text file), which is impractical for publication on the Web. As a result, users rarely access these scanned documents-and usually only when a problem demands it.

Acrobat Capture 2.0 revolutionizes document conversion, generating a small, cross-platform, searchable electronic document that looks exactly like the paper original-and is easily published on the Web, on CD-ROM, or in e-mail. The software contains patented technology that virtually eliminates the need for OCR clean-up. Acrobat Capture can generate either a PDF Normal file, placing a small bitmap in the document where the program encounters a suspect character, or it can create a PDF Image+Text file that maintains the original scanned image and hides the OCR'd text behind it. This OCR method is possible because the PDF file format is rich enough to include images and text anywhere on the page, in almost any color space.

Acrobat Capture Brings Paper Documents Back to Life
In the conversion process, Acrobat Capture maintains the look and feel of original, highly formatted documents, recognizing fonts, tables, graphics, and forms, and maintaining the layout of the original. The software enables users to convert paper-based information to an electronic file format is rich enough to include images and text anywhere on the page, in almost any color space.

In the conversion process, Acrobat Capture maintains the look and feel of original, highly formatted documents, recognizing fonts, tables, graphics, and forms, and maintaining the layout of the original. The software enables users to convert paper-based information to an electronic format that can be archived on-line and quickly accessed and searched. And, with an automated batch-conversion feature, Acrobat Capture proves an extremely cost-effective solution for transforming large volumes of paper-based information into electronic form for Web publication.

Converting Paper to PDF
Your need for a specific Acrobat product depends on the scope of your paper-to-Web project. Both Acrobat 3.0 and Acrobat Capture 2.0 convert paper to PDF, although Acrobat Capture 2.0 is the right tool for converting large volumes of paper-based information.

Product User	Conversion Scope	Number of Pages to Convert to PDF	Recommended Adobe Products
Individual	Personal, group	Less than 100	Acrobat 3.0 with a personal scanner (i.e., HP, Fujitsu(R), Visioneer)
Workgroup	Department or workgroup	Less than 500	Acrobat Capture 2.0 with a shared scanner (i.e., HP network scanner)
Dedicated individual	Business application	Less than 1,000	Acrobat Capture 2.0 with high-speed scanners (i.e., HP, Fujitsu)
Dedicated scanning operation	Business application  mail room	More than 1,000	Multiple Acrobat Capture servers with document capture subsystems (i.e., Cornerstone(R), Kofax(R), and high-speed scanner (i.e., Fujitsu, Kodak(R))
Scanning service bureau	Outsourced by a department, enterprise, or institution	More than 1,000	Multiple Acrobat Capture servers with document capture subsystems (i.e., Cornerstone, Kofax, and high-speed scanner (i.e., Fujitsu, Kodak)

However, no matter which Acrobat product you choose for the paper-to-PDF conversion, you'll need Acrobat 3.0 to prepare PDF documents for on-line publication and distribution and to add hyperlinks, thumbnails, bookmarks, annotations, sounds, and other functionality. In addition, you can use Acrobat 3.0 to rearrange PDF pages; combine PDF documents; import and view TIFF, BMP, PCX, DCX, and GIF images; and catalog and index collections of PDFs on a network, a local machine, or a CD.

Acrobat Capture: A Document Capture Solution That Scales From Department to Enterprise

Acrobat Capture software enables any size organization-from department to enterprise-to easily republish paper documents in electronic format, making legacy and paper-based information-key business assets- accessible to anyone, anywhere. Acrobat Capture gives your organization the tools it needs to convert a large volume of paper-based information to a Web-ready format, preserving visual fidelity and content searchability.

A small-scale version of Acrobat Capture, known as the Acrobat Capture plug-in, is included in Acrobat 3.0 software. For personal or low-volume workgroup use, the Acrobat Capture plug-in converts selected image pages that are scanned or imported into Acrobat.

A mid-level document conversion solution includes Acrobat Capture software, teamed with a workgroup scanner and a Web server with a search engine. It offers your department or small workgroup a means for putting paper-based documents on the Web, whether on an Internet or intranet site.

Meeting the needs of high-end service bureaus, Acrobat Capture performs large-volume backfile conversion, integrating output into enterprise document management systems. Acrobat Capture 2.0 software's programming interface allows the PDF conversion engine to be integrated with third-party subsystems for high-volume scanning and document management, making the software a serious component in your organization's intranet publishing solution. Acrobat Capture also enables the indexing, presentation, annotation, and delivery of legacy paper in electronic format.

Acrobat Capture is a key piece of a solution that integrates scanning, network and Web serving, and document managing components. Adobe recognizes the strategic importance of this integration and is creating vendor partnerships to meet the capture demands of low, medium, and high-volume document conversion environments.

Partnering to Provide Customer Solutions
Adobe and its partners offer you efficient, cost-saving, departmental paper-to-Web solutions.

Fujitsu provides a bundle that includes the ScanPartner® 600C, a 15-ppm color desktop scanner and Web content creation tool as well as Adobe PageMill, Adobe Photoshop® LE, and Acrobat 3.0 software.

Acrobat Capture 2.0 integrates with the HP Network ScanJet® 5 scanner, which serves as an automated on-ramp to an intranet, and with Microsoft® Internet Information Server (IIS) 3.0, which includes a search engine and can index converted files, assign them a unique URL, and post them to designated Web pages.

As part of the enterprise and high-end integrated solution, Adobe participates in partnerships with Xerox, Kofax, and Cornerstone. Working with the Acrobat Capture 2.0 API, these companies use scanning subsystems to provide high-volume paper-to-Web conversion for enterprises, service bureaus, and production-level document-management systems.

Xerox plans to link Acrobat Capture 2.0 with its DocuImage Scanner and DocuPath software, as part of a print publishing solution.

Kofax will implement an Acrobat Capture Release Module for its Ascent Capture® software, a turnkey scanning subsystem sold in many imaging solutions.

Cornerstone is using Acrobat Capture 2.0 for high-volume conversion, to integrate PDF with InputAccel® and direct export to Documentum's EDMS.

Like any business, your organization must manage paper-based information, whether daily incoming documents, historical files, or important strategic documents. The Acrobat Capture paper-to-Web solution-with scanning, Web-serving, and document managing capabilities-enables your organization, from the departmental workgroup to the entire enterprise, to effectively manage this information.

Editor's note:
This information is based on the following documents, which you can read in their entirety on Adobe's Web site.
"Adobe Acrobat Capture 2.0: How Your Department Can Bring Paper to Life on the Web" (white paper)

For additional white papers on Acrobat Capture 2.0