Turn Those Cluttered Papers Into Neatly Digitized Copy With Paperport SoftwareDon’t you just hate a mess? I do. Even though I can get messy sometimes when it comes to paperwork, I much prefer things neat and orderly. If that’s you, check out these great imaging PaperPort products from Nuance Communications. A little history first—back in the days when I used PaperPort all the time, they were still owned by a company named Visioneer. You may even have an old Visioneer scanner laying around somewhere. Anyway, in 1999, they bought out a company named ScanSoft (known at the time for OCR products) and switched over to their company name. Then in 2005, ScanSoft entered a merge with Nuance Comunications, which is the company name today. Now we get back to what the software can do for you!
PaperPort software is used for imaging. (This type of imaging shouldn’t be confused with software used to back up a hard disk, like Norton Ghost). It’s used in conjunction with a scanner to digitize papers, photos, and more. The latest version, PaperPort 11, is supposed to be magnificent.
What I’ve always liked about their products is how cleanly you can organize all your stuff. Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re in the habit of keeping your receipts. Now you can scan them, create a PaperPort folder just for receipts, and organize it on the desktop. PaperPort also employ a neat technique known as stacking. Stacking groups desktop items together. Going back to our example, if you want to organize your receipts by company, you can create a stack for groceries, a stack for visits to the vet, and so on. It’s like having a stack of papers right at your fingertips, except in digital form. It’s great for a field such as a medical transcriptionist, whose livelihood is based on converting hard copy to computer format.
But don’t think it’s just good for paper documents—it also works great with images! The feature that I loved about PaperPort was that you didn’t have to know a lot of technobabble to adjust and clean up your pictures. Let’s say you have an image that’s too dark. The computer can show you a 3x3 preview grid in which you can see what the picture looks like if it’s darkened and lightened based on brightness and contrast. You simply click on the one you like and it generates a new grid. You can keep adjusting the photo until you get exactly what you want…how cool is that! Sure there are other companies out there—but aside from the really big names like Adobe (Photoshop) and Microsoft (Picture It!), PaperPort is probably the best little imaging program you can find anywhere. |