How to reduce size of low quality color images submitted via Forms

asked on May 5

My current client uploads color images taken with phone cameras or tablets for EVERYTHING, and most of it is done with Laserfiche Forms. I've discussed the option of setting up their offices with copiers/scanners linked to Import Agent and deal with image issues at the copier, but that's not a realistic option at this time.

I've done some experiments with Quick Fields, but it can only convert to B&W, which reduces most of the file images to unusable blobs of white and black. Many images are of documents on colored paper taken in poor lighting.

I cannot train and enforce on 1000+ non-technical users how to convert images on their phones to scale down and decolorize images before submitting.

What I need is some way to convert the submitted images to greyscale and/or a different image format than TIFF so they don't take up many TB of drive space.

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replied on May 5

Hey Glen - this post was in the private group, but I see you had commented on the post, so I’m sure you can see it.

https://answers.laserfiche.com/questions/217254/Existing-Image-Compression#217374

It is mentioned that at least one VAR has workflow add-ons that might be able to achieve this.

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replied on May 5 • Show version history

I did some tests with ImageMagick and quickly determined it wasn't a realistic option. I'm VERY conservative when it comes to doing anything with volumes or the files in them. Laserfiche developers assume we're not going to mess about with those files or do anything more creative than the defaults.

I've seen bad things happen when people get creative with volumes....

What I'm looking for is make Laserfiche themselves aware we need better options for reducing images sent via mobile device by users. Even just an option to convert to grayscale with QuickFields, Import Agent and/or Web/Windows Client would do the trick.

Or to get other solutions from the community. Like maybe there's some mobile photo app that's easy to push out to users that will do image scaling and conversion to lower resolution greyscale. Or maybe someone's figured out something clever saving uploads to the Forms Server drive and doing conversions there.

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replied on May 5 • Show version history

Sorry, I was not referring to ImageMagick, I was referring to the comment at the bottom of that conversation made by Blake Smith - where he says that MCCi has a tool that works within Workflow.

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replied on May 5 • Show version history

No worries. The MCCi Power pack doesn't do anything else we're interested in.

Laserfiche should be providing file compression and conversion tools with Forms or Workflow already. Especially after killing PhotoDocs and seeming on track to do the same to Quick Fields.

I'm hoping someone has a suggestion like I mentioned above. A very user friendly mobile (Android) camera app that makes it easy to scale down and convert to greyscale images before upload.

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replied on May 7

Sign me up for wanting to see basic image processing options for this and for PDFs it creates from forms. We have had to create custom imagemagick integrations as well because of the obscene amounts of space users will use otherwise.

I uncertain as to why Laserfiche sees it as reasonable to generate 200mb+ PDF files in cloud with no way to reduce because of image attachments.

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How to reduce size of low quality color images submitted via Forms

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