2023.1:Image Processing (Activity)

This article is about an older version of Grooper. Information may be out of date and UI elements may have changed.
2025	2023.1

WIP	This article is a work-in-progress or created as a placeholder for testing purposes. This article is subject to change and/or expansion. It may be incomplete, inaccurate, or stop abruptly. This tag will be removed upon draft completion.

wallpaper Image Processing is an Activity that enhances contract Batch Page images and optimizes them for better OCR text recognition and data extraction results.

About

The Image Processing Activity (generally applied via a Batch Process Step) applies a preconfigured IP Profile to a document.

An IP Profile lists a series of steps to performing image processing functions called "IP Commands". There are several IP Commands in Grooper, including ones that remove borders from an image, adjust the skew angle of an image, change the color format of an image, and more. For more information on configuring an IP Profile, visit the IP Profile wiki page.

Permanent vs. Temporary Image Processing

The Image Processing Activity permanently alters a document's image by applying an IP Profile. However, it is possible to temporarily clean up document images to benefit OCR results and revert back to the original document image. This needs to be done during the Recognize Activity rather than the Image Processing Activity.

For example, you may have a document where table lines are getting in the way of accurate OCR. However, if you remove these lines during the Image Processing activity, they will be permanently removed, making it difficult to review the documents in Review and changing the archival image stored later to something that no longer looks like the original document.

Instead, you can use an OCR Profile referencing an IP Profile containing a Line Removal command during Recognize. The image will be temporarily changed according to the IP Profile. Then, OCR will run on the altered image. Last, the image will revert back to its original form.

For more information on Temporary Image Processing, please see the OCR Profile, IP Profile, and Recognize wiki pages.

The Image Processing Activity

If you are more interested in making permanent changes to documents to clean up the pages and improve OCR results, then you might consider adding an Image Processing Batch Process Step to your Batch Process. The following are just a few things you can do by adding an appropriately configured IP Profile to your Image Processing Batch Process Step:

This page is slightly askew.	A Deskew IP Step can correct this.
The off-white background of this page can make certain things hard to read.	A Binarize IP Step can change the image to black and white.
This page has a dark border around it that can make OCR more difficult.	The Auto Border Crop and Border Fill IP Steps can remove the border.

For more examples, instructions, and tips on setting up an IP Profile, take a look at the IP Profile wiki article.

How To

Adding the Image Processing Step

1. Right click on the Batch Process.
2. Hover over "Add Activity", then hover over "Cleanup & Recognition". Then click on "Image Processing..."
3. When the "Add Activity" window pops up, you can change the Step Name if you like. In this tutorial we are going to keep it as the default of "Image Processing".
4. Click "EXECUTE" at the top right corner of the "Add Activity" window.

5. Now you should have an Image Processing Batch Process Step in your Batch Process.
6. By default, the Scope property is set to Page. Generally, you want to keep your Scope to a Page level for Image Processing because the step permanently edits an image and must do so at the Page level.

Configuring the Batch Process Step

1. We are using an IP Profile that we have copied and pasted from the "Essentials" Project. The "Essentials" Project comes pre-installed with every Grooper Repository.
2. Click the hamburger icon to the right of the IP Profile property.
3. Navigate to and select the IP Profile.

4. If you want Grooper to save an unedited copy of the file attached to the document, click the check box next to Enable Undo to set the property to True.

5. You can click the hamburger icon to the right of the Compression property to set a custom format for this Batch Process Step. If left as the default (none), then it will use the compression settings specified on the root node of the repository.

PDF Options: Bursting vs. Rendering

1. Finally, we have the PDF Options properties. By default they are both enabled. How you configure these properties largely depends on the type of documents you are working with.

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BEWARE OF COMMONLY USED TERMS ACROSS MULTIPLE ACTIVITES The Image Processing activity's Bursting and Rendering properties are related to, but distinct from the Split Pages activity's and Rasterize command's Bursting and Rendering properties. For Image Processing, the Bursting and Rendering properties only pertain to how different types of PDF file types are processed by an IP Profile.

The point of Image Processing is to clean up an image before handing that image to an OCR engine. With this in mind, there are three main types of documents you will be processing in Grooper:

1. JPEG page objects, which always need OCR.
2. Image-based PDF page objects, which always need OCR.
3. Text-based PDF page objects, which NEVER need OCR since they already have native, readable text.

So, what happens in Image Processing for each of these types of documents? The Image Processing activity will conditionally apply the IP Profile, given the following:

Page Type	Result	Notes
JPEG pages	The IP Profile will be applied in all cases, no matter what.	This is normal behavior for the Image Processing activity. It generally expects to process images.
Image-based PDF pages	The IP Profile will only be applied if Bursting and/or Rendering are enabled.	The PDF will be copied over or overwritten as an image with the applied changes.
Text-based PDF pages	ONLY Orient or Auto-Orient steps will be applied if Rendering is enabled.	This will ONLY rotate the PDF's orientation. Since it does not need OCR, there are no other changes that would need to be made.

FYI	If both Bursting and Rendering are enabled, then Bursting will always take priority over Rendering if possible. Image-Based PDFs can be Bursted while Text-Based PDFs cannot.

So, let's go through 3 different scenarios: With JPEGs, image-based PDFs, and text-based PDFs.

JPEGs

Bursting	Rendering	Result
Enabled	Enabled	Image does not need to be bursted or rendered because it is already an image. The whole IP Profile is applied.
Disabled	Enabled	Image does not need to be bursted or rendered because it is already an image. The whole IP Profile is applied.
Disabled	Disabled	Image does not need to be bursted or rendered because it is already an image. The whole IP Profile is applied.

• There is no difference in the application of Image Processing to a JPEG if either Bursting or Rendering is enabled or disabled. A JPEG is always processed the same.
• A JPEG does not need to be converted to an image because it already is an image.
• The full IP Profile can be applied to the image.

Image-Based PDF

Bursting	Rendering	Result
Enabled	Enabled	PDF will use Bursting properties and will be burst into an image. The whole IP Profile is applied.
Disabled	Enabled	PDF will use Rendering properties and will be rendered into an image. The whole IP Profile is applied.
Disabled	Disabled	PDF will remain a PDF and the IP Profile cannot be applied.

• For image-based PDFs, with either Bursting or Rendering enabled, it will convert the PDF to an image using the enabled method (with Bursting taking priority). The IP Profile can then be applied.
• An IP Profile can only be applied to images, not PDFs. So if both properties are disabled, then the IP Profile cannot be applied.

Text-Based PDF

Bursting	Rendering	Result
Enabled	Enabled	PDF will use Rendering properties and will be rendered into an image since it cannot be bursted. ONLY Orient or Auto-Orient will be applied from the IP Profile.
Disabled	Enabled	PDF will use Rendering properties and will be rendered into an image. ONLY Orient or Auto-Orient will be applied from the IP Profile.
Disabled	Disabled	PDF will remain a PDF and the IP Profile cannot be applied.

• For Text-Based PDF, there is no reason to run any IP Profile Step other than Orient or Auto-Orient because the document is already perfect otherwise and has native text making OCR unnecessary.
• With Rendering enabled, it will render the PDF to an image (text-based PDFs cannot be bursted). Then ONLY apply Orient or Auto-Orient if present in the IP Profile.
• Just like with Image-Based PDFs, the IP Profile can only be applied to images, not PDFs. So if both properties are disabled, then nothing from the IP Profile can be applied.