You will soon be able to scan documents with a small digital camera, instead of bulky flatbed and sheet-fed scanners (EP 1233606). Hewlett-Packard of Palo Alto, California, says digital cameras have enough resolution to capture documents. The only problem is that the image can be spoilt by reflections from flash or room lighting whiting out text.
So HP’s camera/scanner will take two images: once with full flash, to swamp ambient light effects, then again with a lower-power flash, to let ambient light contribute to the image. The two images are then aligned electronically and digitally averaged to remove any glare. You can then send the…
