Deskew
Straightens pages that went through the scanner at an angle, so zones line up and OCR reads whole lines instead of broken ones.
Scanned image clean-up, applied to every page in the batch.
Crooked pages, speckles, black edges, pages upside down and the blank backs of duplex scans all cost OCR accuracy, barcode reads and disk space. SimpleIndex cleans them up in the Image Enhancement step of the Job Settings Wizard, so every page that reaches OCR, barcode recognition and your folders is straight, clean and the right way up. It runs on your own Windows machine and is licensed once.
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Six ways to clean a page
Turn on only what your documents need. Each option adds processing time, and many scanners already do some of these themselves.
Despeckle
Removes the specks and snow left by dirty glass, faxes and old photocopies, which OCR otherwise reads as stray punctuation.
Black border removal
Erases the black pixels around the outer edge of each image, the shadow left by a dark scanner background or a copier lid.
Hole punch removal
Removes the black circles that punched holes leave along the edge of pages scanned from binders and files. It is a viewer tool, applied to one page or a selection of files, rather than a job setting.
Auto-rotate and fixed rotation
Auto-rotate detects each page's orientation and turns it upright, on color images and PDFs as well as black and white. For duplex jobs, you can also rotate every front or every back page by a set number of degrees.
Blank page deletion
Deletes blank pages by file size, which is faster, or by the ratio of dark to white pixels, which is more accurate. Blank pages can also mark where one document ends and the next begins.
Field 02 image_enhancement
Setting it up takes one wizard step.
Open the Image Enhancement step
In the Job Settings Wizard, choose the Image Enhancement step for the job you want to clean up.
Pick the clean-up
Tick Deskew, Despeckle, Erase Black Borders, Invert Image or Auto Rotate, and set a rotation for front and back pages if your scanner needs it.
Choose how blank pages are found
Use Minimum File Size for speed, or Black Pixel Ratio for accuracy. Blank black-and-white pages are usually under 10,000 bytes, and the recommended pixel ratio is 0.001 to 0.010.
Run the batch
Every page is cleaned before barcodes and OCR are read, then named, indexed and filed with the rest of the job.
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Smaller files, too
The same step can apply your compression settings to every processed image, resample images to the resolution set for PDF processing, and resize them proportionally to a maximum width or height. For PDFs, SimpleIndex can detect low-color pages and save them as black and white, which cuts file size sharply without losing anything OCR needs.
Pages can also be inverted, for documents that come out white on black, like microfilm and photo negatives.
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Fix individual pages by hand
Some pages need a person to look at them. The SimpleIndex viewer has the same tools one click away: rotate left, right or 180°, deskew, despeckle, remove black borders, remove hole punches, and crop, on a single page or a selection of files.
For magazines, booklets and two-page spreads, automatic image splitting cuts each scan into separate pages and crops repeated zones.
Clean pages read better. See how batch OCR and zone OCR use them.
Before you clean up a batch.
My scanner already cleans up images. Do I need this?
Often not for new scans. Modern scanner drivers can deskew and drop blank pages on the fly, and SimpleIndex recommends using its own clean-up only when needed. It matters for pages that didn't come through a smart scanner driver: copier scan folders, older archives of TIFF and PDF files, and scanners without image processing.
Can blank pages separate documents instead of being deleted?
Yes. A page read as blank can start a new document by stepping the autonumber, and you can keep that page for later processing rather than delete it.
How does SimpleIndex know a page is blank?
Either by file size in bytes, which is fast and depends on your resolution and compression, or by the ratio of dark to white pixels, which is more accurate. You set the threshold, and a page under it is deleted or used as a separator.
Does auto-rotate work on color scans and PDFs?
Yes. Since version 10, auto-rotate works on color images and PDF files without converting them to TIFF first.
Does clean-up slow processing down?
Yes, a little, which is why each option is separate. Turn on only what your documents need.
Try it on your messiest batch.
The free trial runs the full software on your own documents.
