Software
Software
Zotero
Zotero is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox browser. Although this description does not do Zotero justice, essentially it enables the user to collect, organise and cite academic references. It also integrates brilliantly with various wesbsites such as Worldcat and Jstor to allow the user the record refernces or lists of references into the Zotero database. It is in constant use for this project for gathering secondary source material and is our main referencing system. The Zotero website carries an extensive series of aids and tutorial videos.
Canon Remote Capture
This software is compatible with several Canon digital compact cameras and digital SLR cameras. It allows the tethering of a camera to a laptop or desktop computer. When the camera is tethered most of the critical camera settings and features are available to be changed on the computer. The computer monitor serves as the viewfinder for the camera. A left click of a mouse captures a document image and the image file is saved directly to the computer hard drive. This reduces the downtime necessary to swap out camera memory cards and upload images to a computer. It also enables the user to view the cpatured image almost immediately on a large screen rather than a camera viewfinder allowing greater quality control.
PaperPort 12 Professional
This software is designed primarily for the commercial environment but has been used constantly over the lifetime of the project. This most recent version of the software added greater integration with cameras to the already excellent scanner workflows. It provides basic image fixes and integration with a variety of other software packages from its PaperPort desktop.
Adobe Photoshop CS4
Photoshop is the benchmark for image editing software. Of the countless tools it offers, we have made frequent use of the programmable macro tool. It allows you to apply a series of processes (e.g. image edits, conversion to JPEG and save in a specific location) to thousands of images. When set up it is an entirely automated process which saves considerable time. The image analysis tools are also invaluable both as a guide to image correction and as a quality control mechanism.
Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional
Adobe Acrobat brings together a large array of features within one package. This project has made considerable use of it's web capture capabilities. Using this feature you can capture some or all of a webpages content as a searchable PDF. Also the ability to reduce file sizes and optimise several created PDFs to a set standard automatically is very advantageous.
OmniPage 17 Professional
This is one of the foremost and highly featured Optical Character Recognition software available. It seamlessly integrates with a scanner workflow and has recently added a greater camera compatibility. This software recognises the typeface text in a scan or photo of a document. It facilitates the creation of searchable PDF files and word documents from photographed historical documents. It is a key component of the software packages we use for this project and it helps to greatly enhance the utility of the digitised documents.
PDF Converter 6 Professional
This software is similar to Adobe Acrobat Professional which this project also uses. Crucially this program also offers significant improvements over some of the features of the Adobe product. The Batch creation of PDF's according to customised settings is a feature that this project makes particular and persistent use of. Also, this program excels at converting PDF's to Microsoft Office document formats with excellent retention of formatting.
Pantone Huey Pro
This software is installed and run weekly on all project desktops and laptops used for digital image capture and post capture processing. It helps ensure that each monitor retains colour fidelity despite its age, make or model.
Canon Digital Photo Professional
This software comes bundled with Canon Digital SLR Cameras. It has an impressive array of features and a user friendly interface. The documents we digitise are saved initially in Canon's RAW format (.CR2). This software is used for the initial quality check and for generating 450dpi 16bit colour Tiffs from the RAW file.
Adobe Bridge CS4
This software is a visually based media management engine which as expected provides good integration with the other Adobe CS4 programs. We primarily use this software to organise image files (JPEG or TIFF), to rename files and to apply metadata to images.
