Commenting and Markup
In PixEdit and PixView you can add comments and insert a different set of markups to your digital document. This is very useful if you want to share or collaborate with other users about content in your document. The functionality is part of the PDF standard file format. Documents which contain comments and markups may be viewed in, for instance, PixView, Adobe Reader or any other compatible viewer.
PixEdit and PixView support the following tools for commenting and markup:
Add a sticky note anywhere in the document.
Select text with the Highlight Text tool to highlight it.
Select text with the Underline Text tool to underline it.
Select text with the Cross-Out Text tool to make it appear crossed out.
You can also add circles, rectangles and lines as part of your markup. By right-clicking a specific markup you can select ‘Options…’. In this options dialog you change how your markup appear in the document and you may also add a more proper title and subject to it. By double-clicking the markup a popup dialog will appear. Within this dialog you can add comments specific for this markup and when you are finished you may hide it with minimize button.
Redaction Tool
Redaction and security – Read this first
You can use PixEdit or PixView to redact, or censor, confidential information in a document by “blacking out” selected words or sentences. PixEdit and PixView offer a safe way to do this, even on documents that contains hidden OCR text. Even though PixEdit and PixView does this in a safe way, it is still recommended to read though the following information about security aspects of redaction.
Redaction directly on paper before scanning Avoid using ink for manual redaction directly on the original paper document. The reason is that modern software such as PixEdit® or PhotoShop® in some cases may be used to separate the ink redaction from the text if the document has been scanned in greyshade or full color mode. If the document has already been manually redacted, you may consider using PixEdit or PixView to re-redact after scanning to make sure that the ink cannot be removed digitally. If you do not want to re-redact, consider to scanning your document in pure black/white mode or reduce the color depth after scanning by using the PixEdit menu Image, Colors, Convert to black and white. Ink redactions in pure black and white documents are usually impossible to remove by digital means.
Digitally born documents Note that redaction by putting black color over sensitive words by the use of a word processor and then export the file to PDF is not a safe method. The reason is that some combinations of word processors and PDF export software may include the redacted text itself beneath the black color in the final PDF file. By the use of ordinary software, the black layer may easily be removed so that the redacted text is revealed. If you use PixEdit or PixView to redact digitally born documents however, the redacted text will be permanently removed.
Redacting using non-dedicated software Some general PDF editors may simply add a layer of black above text in scanned documents without removing the text itself. If you use a general PDF editor with unsuitable graphic tools for redacting, you should check if the redacted text as well as any invisible OCR layer is really gone after saving. PixEdit however, always permanently removes graphics as well as hidden OCR-text in scanned documents when you use, for example, filled rectangles. It is handier however, to use the dedicated redaction tool in PixEdit or PixView.
Partly translucent pages Note that when scanning partly translucent documents, some information may leak between opposite pages especially if you scan in grayscale or full color mode. This information leak may be almost invisible to the eye, and sometimes even undetectable. However, such faint information can be enhanced by modern software and be made readable by a technically skilled operator.
Figure: A real-world example of retrieved text from the opposite side of a thin, scanned front page. Only the front page was scanned. The text from the opposite page was enhanced and mirrored by PixEdit.
For the above reason, redacted, double sided, thin pages may create a special security problem. Please consider to scan such documents in black/white mode or to convert the scanned document to black/white using Image, Colors, Convert to black and white before or after redaction. As an alternative, use Image, Colors, Drop color and select white with a tolerance of 5%. This will usually remove any leaked graphics from opposite pages.
Redacting
The redaction tool provides a safe way of censoring both digitally born and scanned documents. Any hidden OCR text as well as the graphic representation of the redacted text will be permanently removed. It will not be possible to retrieve the redacted text after saving a redacted document.
How to redact: Activate the redaction tool and select the area you want to redact. The selected area will be blacked out. If you have PixEdit with the OCR option, PixEdit will offer to search for other instances of the same word you have just redacted so they too will be redacted automatically. The style window must be visible in order to do this. Press F10 if the tool style window is not visible. This options is not available in PixView.
Instead of manually selecting the text to be redacted, you may type a word or text in the redaction tool style window and click the search button to display a list of candidates to be redacted. By default, all listed candidates will be selected and redacted when you click the “Redact selected” button.
When redacting documents that are not digitally born, PixEdit uses OCR-technology to search for candidates to be redacted. If the document has poor quality, the automatic search function may not find all candidates. It is therefore good practice to always check if all candidates have been found after automatic redaction.
After Scanning
Configuring ”After Scanning”
You can configure PixEdit to execute almost any operation sequence automatically after you have scanned a batch of documents. If you are using DocServer in PixEdit, the after scan processing will be executed while you are scanning the next batch of documents.
Independent of scanner type and brand, PixEdit offers automatic document separation using barcodes, quality enhancements, page size detection, automatic orientation, automatic deskew and blank page removal, automatic color and resolution optimization (ACRO), OCR using the OCR snap-in module so your saved PDF’s becomes searchable, automatic saving to any supported file format using barcodes, incrementing file names or time/date, execution of custom made macros and much more.
DocServer in PixEdit 7
The DocServer window processes documents at the same time as you are scanning or working manually with documents, and is a fully integrated part of PixEdit. DocServer can serve and process an unlimited number of folders that are continuously filled with documents from network scanners and/or multi functional devices. The most common use of DocServer however, is to process the last scanned batch from the current Twain scanner while you are scanning the next one. DocServer does this automatically in the background and your scanner is therefore always ready to scan a new batch.
Automatic updates
PixEdit now supports automatic checking for new versions and revisions. You will no longer receive e-mails when a new revision is available if you have subscribed to this service on our login page. Instead, you will see a small icon in the lower right corner of PixEdit, indicating if a new revision is available for download. To enable automatic checking, use Help, Check For Updates and check this option.
PDF/A Compact
You can now save your documents in a new file format called PDF/A Compact in PixEdit 7.7.0 revision. This file format offers between five and ten times smaller files than traditional PDF’s with JPG compression without any visible reduction in document quality. Saving files in this file format is easy - just specify PDF/A Compact in File SaveAs for manual save, or in the After Scanning dialog box if you use automatic saving. Need to reduce the size of your existing documents? Simply use the Batch Wizard to convert thousands of documents every hour automatically.
Forms Processing
The forms processing function in PixEdit enables you to capture information from scanned paper forms such as customer polls, for further processing in, for example, Microsoft Excel. You can extract information from existing files and/or from incoming files from a network scanner or directly during desktop scanning. Both single page and multi page forms are supported in color and black/white format. If your task is to process a huge amount of forms in a very short time, you can let several PixEdit licenses run on separate computers and process forms from the same “incoming” folder without access conflicts. You need to have PixEdit with OCR plug in in order to process forms.
Document management - Electronic document file format for long-term preservation.
The International Standards Organization (ISO) approved a Standard governing electronic document archiving:
ISO-19005-1 - PDF/A
Why the PDF/A initiative?
In a first step towards electronic archiving, many organizations implemented TIFF archives. TIFF guarantees reproducibility in the long-term and has an established structure. TIFF is also easy to transmit in a worldwide business environment but is not easily searchable. A movement then began towards PDF. PDF is a more attractive archiving format than TIFF for a variety of reasons: PDF stores structured objects (e.g. text, vector graphics, raster images), allowing for an efficient full-text search in an entire archive. TIFF is a raster format and must first be scanned with an OCR engine (optical character recognition) before it can be searched.
PDF files are more compact and require only a fraction of the memory space of respective TIFF files, often with a better quality. The smaller file size is especially advantageous for electronic file transfer (FTP, e-mail attachment etc.). Metadata like title, author, creation date, modification date, subject, keywords, etc. can be embedded in a PDF file. PDF files can be automatically classified based on the metadata, without requiring human intervention.
- PDF/A is a stable derivative of the PDF format, internationally accepted as a Standard for long-term electronic archiving. PDF/A-1a ensures the preservation of a document’s logical structure and content text stream in natural reading order.
- PDF/A is expected to establish itself as the new electronic archiving standard. PDF is prevalent in public and private sectors worldwide and is already an accepted archiving format in countless markets. The PDF/A Standard will help ensure that users get the guarantee of long-term reproducibility.
- The PDF/A Standard will help ensure the long-term preservation of the electronic files. Microsoft now supports the direct generation of PDF/A from their new Office products. The signal is loud and clear. PDF/A, internationally accepted, is here to stay.
View scanned documents in any web browser without plug-in
Using File, Export to WEB in PixEdit, you can convert and publish any supported document type to a web server. Both single page and multi page documents may be exported. The result is searchable and viewable in all types of web browsers without any need for plug-ins or view software. Since PixEdit is exporting your documents using plain HTML code, no special action is required by the reader to view the exported documents.
The Team at TechSoft USA