• Electronic Evidence Processing
• Document Scanning/OCR
  • Color Imaging
  • Oversized Imaging
  • OCR
  • CD-ROM Production
  • Blowbacks
  • Bates Labeling
• Document Coding
• Web-Based Document Repositories
• Administrative Record Preparation
• Software Sales and Training
• Deposition Summaries
• MCLE Seminars
• White Papers

What is Oversized Scanning?

Any document with dimensions larger than 11 x 17 inches is considered "oversized." Maps, blueprints, construction drawings, medical charts, environmental monitoring readouts, aerial photographs, flip charts, and flowcharts all are examples of documents that may be oversized. Such documents require specialized equipment and handling in scanning.

Why scan oversized documents?

In a legal environment, scanning oversized documents allows their images to be produced along with those of standard-sized documents. In the past, scanning oversized documents involved either capturing only the legend information and losing the rest of the image, or breaking the document into multiple images, requiring users to reassemble the entire image from document fragments. Oversized scanning allows an entire image to be captured whole, without seams or overlaps. This means users can view full images on-screen, zoom in on details of complete images, and blow back images in their entirety.

What sizes can be scanned?

D-M can scan oversized documents up to 40 inches wide, and essentially of any length. Wider documents can be scanned in multiple passes, creating multiple images. Common sizes include 18 x 24 inches, 24 x 36 inches, 36 x 48 inches, and 36 x 60 inches.

Can my color oversized documents be scanned?

Oversized documents can be scanned in either black-and-white or color. Color scanning can be at 8-, 16-, or 32-bit color, providing palettes of from 16 to more than 1 million colors. We also scan standard-sized color images using flatbed scanners.

How good is the image?

We typically scan oversized documents at 300 dots per inch (dpi), which results in standard image quality. When exceptional clarity or fine detail resolution is needed, we scan at 600 dpi.

How much space do scanned oversized images require?

Oversized images require much more storage space than standard images. For example, a 24 x 36 inch color image, scanned at 300 dpi, may require 1 megabyte or more of storage space. Some complicated, large images require several hundred megabytes. These images may be burned onto CD-ROMs and/or loaded to hard disks. CD-ROMs may store several hundred relatively small oversized images or only one or two very large ones.

How are the scanned images of oversized documents used?

Once scanned, images can be burned onto CD-ROMs or printed. If you are using a database package that allows you to view images and documents simultaneously, such as CIS-FT or Concordance, we will place the oversized images into directory structures and provide indices so that the new oversized images will be integrated into the imagebase for a case. However, very large images may not be accessible using standard PCs, because they require large amounts of memory and image processing capabilities that are only available on high-end workstations. In addition, large image files may take a long time to load unless the workstation is particularly fast.

For document productions, it is much more common for oversized images to be printed. However, scanned images allow printing on demand of as many sets of blowbacks as required.

What about oversized printing?

D-M can print any image up to 36 inches wide at full size, using our color ink-jet oversized printer. Documents up to 40 inches in width can be printed by reducing them slightly during printing. Documents larger than 36 inches can be scanned in multiple passes and printed in adjoining strips. The multiple images can be joined or kept separate, as needed.

Our printer can output up to 10 relatively small images per hour. Large, complicated images may take up to an hour to print. Original-quality prints for public display usually demand high gloss paper and high resolution printing. Standard-quality images used in litigation production normally require only low gloss paper and 400 dpi resolution.

For more information regarding oversized scanning, please contact us at info@dminfo.com , or call 1-800-653-2112.