ELAN Converter™ is an image batch processor and converter program with merging capabilities. This means that the user sets up the conversion parameters, selects images for processing, and ELAN Converter™ does the job automatically in the background. When it finishes the conversion, you can visually check the result and see if everything went fine during the conversion. The converter engine creates a log of all the converted images and displays a list of warning and error messages separately from the list of the flawlessly converted files.

The input file can be any raster image or PDF file supported by ELAN Converter™. A list of the supported file formats is listed in the Supported File Formats section of this chapter.

PDF output  Sub-Formats

ELAN Converter™ has two different sub-versions, the Image Only and the Image+Text. The Image Only version of the software is included in the "Light" version and can only produce Image Only PDF files, which means the created PDF file will only contain a raster image without any text information. The Image+Text version of ELAN Converter™, however (which is included in the Pro version), can produce both Image Only or Image+Text PDF files. Image+Text PDF files contain a raster image with a hidden text in front of them. This way the text will be selectable, transferable to a word processor, and most importantly, the files will be searchable. In the Image+Text PDF files the document itself is a scanned image, and the user can only see the image, because the text is not visible. However, the text is there, written on the top of the image with a hidden ink, therefore the user can select it and search for words in the full document.

Note that ELAN Converter™ uses an OCR engine for creating the hidden text information. OCRing is a very time consuming task, it might take as much as 2 or 3 seconds per image. The OCR engine might fail for some words, especially if the text is difficult to read. The OCR engine is not a human, so it does not really understand what the text actually means. However, it looks up each OCR'ed word in a dictionary and automatically finds the correct spelling of the words. It has difficulties with reading handwritten text, unless the letters are very precisely formed.

Operation Modes

ELAN Converter™ has the following operating modes:

We suggest that you use the Batch Mode when you can specify a list of the images you wish to process. Use the Watch Mode when your image files are generated by a third party application and you wish to convert them to a different format on-the-fly. Use the command line tool when you are integrating ELAN Converter™ with your own application. For example, you can write a batch file that converts all files in a directory into PDF and calls a ZIP creating tool that packs them all into a single ZIP archive.

Use the command line tool when you are integrating ELAN Converter™ with your own application. For example, you can write a batch file that converts all files in a directory into PDF and calls a ZIP creating tool that packs them all into a single ZIP archive.