In late 1998 and early 1999 Acme began the process of switching from analog, photocopier based reproduction of brittle books to digital imaging. Unlike its analog predecessor, digital imaging allows us to scan and save digital files of the books we process. The benefits of this exciting and rapidly evolving technology are already showing up in better image capture, cleaner and higher resolution printing and the option to use the images in the future without the need of rescanning from the originals.

We continue to offer high quality paper facsimiles of our clients' books during the first phase of our technology switch. As in our preservation photocopy work, we provide expert handling and preparation of your originals. After scanning, we save the image files in either Group 4 TIFF or pdf formats. For printing, we convert the TIFF files to PostScript and print the pages on 600 dpi digital laser printers. Our printing software gives us considerable control over the images, allowing us to produce book pages far exceeding the quality we were able to achieve with photocopiers. We also can print high quality grayscale and color images on our Minolta, Xerox and Canon digital printers.

While replacement shelf copies are currently our primary product, we continue to investigate other delivery formats. We are discussing available OCR (optical character recognition) options with various vendors and we are working with software tools developers to design custom imaging software applications that will increase productivity and allow Acme to continue to produce the unique high quality products our clients have come to expect.