In the previous segment you saw how to use the Erase and Magic Erase tools to remove unwanted cells from the raster image. However, if the image you are working with requires much cleanup, these techniques could be time consuming. To help streamline this process, you can use the cell selection tools in conjunction with the raster cleanup tools.

You can select connected cells that meet a variety of criteria, depending on the type of cells that you want to remove.

You can choose whether to select based on the total area of connected cells, or the length of the diagonal of a group of connected cells.

You can choose whether to select foreground cells or background cells. Foreground cells are the color of the linework that you're tracing. Background cells are the color of the background. In this example the text is the color of the linework, so foreground cells will be selected for removal.

You can select patches of cells that are less than or greater than a given number of cells. In this example the text is made up of patches smaller than 500 cells.

Once the extra cells are selected, you can remove them with the Erase Selected Cells command, from the Raster Cleanup menu.

Once you've cleaned up the raster you're ready to batch vectorize it.

The ArcScan extension is only active in an edit session. The Start Editing command enables you to begin an edit session.

When performing batch vectorization, it is sometimes necessary to edit the raster image prior to generating features. This process is referred to as raster cleanup and involves the removal of unwanted cells from the raster image that are not in the scope of the vectorization. ArcScan provides the tools to perform raster cleanup.