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Kodak Imaging (Win95 and later)

Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2024 10:04 am
by juverax
Kodak Imaging is a graphic utility for acquiring and/or processing scanned documents, originally bundled with Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaging_for_Windows (If you still trust Wikipedia!)

However there are (were) also "Professional Editions", and there are two I know of, and that are available on archive.org:

Version 1: https://archive.org/details/ImagingforW ... nalEdition ( not tested since there is a version 2 !!!! )
Version 2.6: https://archive.org/details/kodak-imaging-pro.-2.6 (Tested: Works fine with Win 10. For installing the program, follow the instructions on the web site.
Also, as a precaution, save the registry BEFORE installing the software, since the cutoff date is saved in a registry key(s) ... which one(s) I don't know, but I am sure there are tools available at the TPFC that can determine which registry keys are accessed when Kodak Imaging starts in order to verify that the trial version is still valid, and this makes the app NOT PORTABLE.

The app implements useful tools for processing scanned documents:
Cropping tool, Deskew, OCR, Basic Editing, etc.
It supports common graphic formats: BMP, JPG (several), Multipage TIF, etc.

I did some research to see if a current commercial version was available. I saw a version 2.8 very similar (identical?) to v.2.6 in terms of graphic tools as far as I can see from the screen shots, and the only additions are tools for coordinating the workflow.

Re: Kodak Imaging (Win95 and later)

Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2024 11:22 am
by webfork
Great post -- there is a TON of aging photo management software out there from commercial vendors like Kodak that I keep wanting to go back and explore. Some remarkably good tools that are just as useful now as then.

Re: Kodak Imaging (Win95 and later)

Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2024 3:27 pm
by juverax
Kodak Imaging is essentially a "Scanning tool" and a "Post-scanning processing tool".
It includes an OCR tool (Omnipage).
It has no tools for photo enhancement or correction.
But it is very effective at improving and manipulating scanned texts.

However, and in addition, it has a utility that offers to compress Color JPG and it is the best that I have seen so far (better than RIOT and similar software).
Though the "reds" are degraded (not the other colors), therefore it should be used when there is a limited use of red in the image, or when it does not matter if the red becomes "too red". This means that the compression is not recommended for portraits, but it is OK for a color cartoon.

Re: Kodak Imaging (Win95 and later)

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2024 2:04 am
by Midas
FWIW and in its heyday, OmniPage was one of the best (if not outright best) OCR toolsets. I used it often for its ease and quality.