I've been a long time user of Nuance's Paperport Pro product (henceforth "PPP"). I'm currently using the latest version 14 but it hasn't been updated for ages and has one very annoying bug so I've been having a play with the beta of NAPS2 (Version 6.0.2.41987) on my Windows 10 Pro PC. I like it but one thing I'm finding is that it creates much bigger files than PPP and, not knowing much about the PDF world, I'm wondering why and whether there is anything I can do about it.
I am using what I think are equivalent profiles in both NAPS2 and PPP. In both cases I am scanning in B&W at 300dpi at A4 paper size from the same single sheet flatbed scanner (the test page I'm scanning is being left untouched in the scanner between test scans and is simple black text on white paper with no photos, drawings, diagrams etc). The only post processing being done in both cases is "Deskew scanned pages" (or "Auto-straighten" as PPP calls it). In NAPS2 I tried all the PDF compatibility settings but left the setting at "Default" because that actually gave the marginally smallest file size.
The scan sizes I get for the same single A4 page of text (all sizes as reported on the MS Windows right-click properties windows and are the "Size" actual sizes in bytes as opposed to the "Size on disc" value)....
PPP - 14,990 bytes
NAPS2 with scale at 1:1 - 72,680 bytes
NAPS2 with scale at 1:2 - 37,937 bytes
NAPS2 with scale at 1:4 - 17,670 bytes
As far as quality goes the PPP and NAPS2-1:1 scan are virtually identical, in fairness I'd say that maybe NAPS2 is very, very fractionally better than PPP but it's so close that it might be my eyes playing tricks on me. Once I get to 1:2 scaling on NAPS2 though there really is no comparison, the quality of the PPP scan can instantly be seen to be appreciably higher and with NAPS2 at 1:4 scaling the quality is attrocious compared to the still smaller PPP scan.
Does Nuance have access to some proprietary/patented technology that allows it to create so much smaller scans that NAPS2 or is there something else going on?
I think I've tried playing with every setting I can. The quality slider is just for JPEG I think? I certainly see no reduction in file size when reducing it to zero. I have also played with brightness and contrast again with no appreciable effect except obviously when I turn brightness to minimum and I end up with a big black blob (scan file size 6,602 bytes).
Any thoughts or advice? I really do fancy escaping the bugs in PPP but from my experiments so far the superior file size for the same quality that I'm seeing with PPP is too compelling.
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PPP probably uses JBIG2 compression, which NAPS2 doesn't support at the moment (it uses G4 which isn't quite as good). I don't think I will be able to add support for JBIG2 in the near future.
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I've been a long time user of Nuance's Paperport Pro product (henceforth "PPP"). I'm currently using the latest version 14 but it hasn't been updated for ages and has one very annoying bug so I've been having a play with the beta of NAPS2 (Version 6.0.2.41987) on my Windows 10 Pro PC. I like it but one thing I'm finding is that it creates much bigger files than PPP and, not knowing much about the PDF world, I'm wondering why and whether there is anything I can do about it.
I am using what I think are equivalent profiles in both NAPS2 and PPP. In both cases I am scanning in B&W at 300dpi at A4 paper size from the same single sheet flatbed scanner (the test page I'm scanning is being left untouched in the scanner between test scans and is simple black text on white paper with no photos, drawings, diagrams etc). The only post processing being done in both cases is "Deskew scanned pages" (or "Auto-straighten" as PPP calls it). In NAPS2 I tried all the PDF compatibility settings but left the setting at "Default" because that actually gave the marginally smallest file size.
The scan sizes I get for the same single A4 page of text (all sizes as reported on the MS Windows right-click properties windows and are the "Size" actual sizes in bytes as opposed to the "Size on disc" value)....
PPP - 14,990 bytes
NAPS2 with scale at 1:1 - 72,680 bytes
NAPS2 with scale at 1:2 - 37,937 bytes
NAPS2 with scale at 1:4 - 17,670 bytes
As far as quality goes the PPP and NAPS2-1:1 scan are virtually identical, in fairness I'd say that maybe NAPS2 is very, very fractionally better than PPP but it's so close that it might be my eyes playing tricks on me. Once I get to 1:2 scaling on NAPS2 though there really is no comparison, the quality of the PPP scan can instantly be seen to be appreciably higher and with NAPS2 at 1:4 scaling the quality is attrocious compared to the still smaller PPP scan.
Does Nuance have access to some proprietary/patented technology that allows it to create so much smaller scans that NAPS2 or is there something else going on?
I think I've tried playing with every setting I can. The quality slider is just for JPEG I think? I certainly see no reduction in file size when reducing it to zero. I have also played with brightness and contrast again with no appreciable effect except obviously when I turn brightness to minimum and I end up with a big black blob (scan file size 6,602 bytes).
Any thoughts or advice? I really do fancy escaping the bugs in PPP but from my experiments so far the superior file size for the same quality that I'm seeing with PPP is too compelling.
Hi,
PPP probably uses JBIG2 compression, which NAPS2 doesn't support at the moment (it uses G4 which isn't quite as good). I don't think I will be able to add support for JBIG2 in the near future.
Thanks Ben. The quick, clear and honest answer is much appreciated.
Be careful with the format JBIG2. Read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBIG2 (Disadvantages)
Or if you a german User: Lies das hier https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBIG2 (Abschnitt: Nachteile)
Yes, it would have to be the lossless version of JBIG2 to avoid that problem.