Technical FAQs

TAMPA, Florida, February 9, 2022 — Accusoft announces the launch of the Women In Tech Scholarship for 2022. The new scholarship program is aimed at female students passionate about pursuing a career in the Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics fields.

The scholarship is open to a female-identifying undergraduate student pursuing a two or four-year degree and studying STEM. Accusoft will award $3,000 in scholarship to the winner. Apply at https://bold.org/scholarships/women-in-tech-scholarship/

The tech field has been exploding recently and offers lucrative job opportunities. Unfortunately, women are still quite underrepresented in all STEM fields, including tech. Despite making up roughly half of the workforce, less than 27% of tech positions are held by women and only 22% of Fortune 500 tech companies have female leaders.

This scholarship aims to support women pursuing STEM so they can find successful careers and create a more diverse workforce.

“Accusoft is a software company with a mission to make the world in which we live and work a better place,” said Jack Berlin, CEO of Accusoft. “We do this by inventing new ways to help organizations become more efficient and innovative, promoting the continuous improvement of our community, and working to minimize our impact on natural resources. We hope that our new scholarship will not only encourage women to go into the tech field but also to give them the resources to complete their degree.”

To apply, students must write an essay detailing why they are interested in STEM and what their career goals are. Apply at https://bold.org/scholarships/women-in-tech-scholarship/

Applications are due May 29th, 2022. The winner will be announced on June 30, 2022.

About Accusoft

Founded in 1991, Accusoft is a software development company specializing in content processing, conversion, and automation solutions. From out-of-the-box and configurable applications to APIs built for developers, Accusoft software enables users to solve their most complex workflow challenges and gain insights from content in any format, on any device. Backed by 40 patents, the company’s flagship products, including OnTask, PrizmDoc™ Viewer, and ImageGear, are designed to improve productivity, provide actionable data, and deliver results that matter. The Accusoft team is dedicated to continuous innovation through customer-centric product development, new version release, and a passion for understanding industry trends that drive consumer demand. Visit us at www.accusoft.com.

The holiday season has always been a big event for the Accusoft team. It’s a great opportunity to bring the entire team together to celebrate the season and reflect on what we accomplished over the previous year. Since a few of our team members are located outside of Florida, we’ve even arranged to have them fly in for the holidays so they can participate.

Unfortunately, COVID 19 restrictions made it impossible for us to hold an in-person holiday party this year. Rather than simply shrugging our shoulders and cancelling the festivities, we tasked our “Event Ninjas” team with creating a virtual holiday event that could live up to those of previous years.

“Our holiday party is the most popular event we hold during the year,” said HR generalist Alissa Waters. “It was important for us to find a way to keep that tradition alive while still respecting the COVID guidelines we put in place as a company to protect our employees.”

Holiday Planning

The Accusoft Event Ninjas team consists of volunteers from every department within the company and meets once a week to plan various employee activities and events throughout the year. While the team is no stranger to planning a holiday party, this year posed significant challenges.

“The big challenge was figuring out how to incorporate that holiday feeling without meeting in person,” said Dawn Girard, marketing and events coordinator and Event Ninja member. “We didn’t want it to feel like just another virtual meeting.”

After some initial conversations, the team decided to incorporate as many longstanding holiday traditions as possible in order to give the event more familiarity. They couldn’t lean entirely upon precedent, however. This year would be the very first holiday party for a number of employees who joined the Accusoft family in 2020. The Event Ninjas team knew they would have to go the extra mile to make the virtual party as inclusive as possible and be an occasion nobody would want to miss.

Virtual Gift Package

Luckily, there was one tradition that could help get everyone in a festive mood. At previous parties, employees typically received a holiday card and a special ornament to commemorate the year. Since there would be no in-person event this year, they had to be mailed instead. That created an opportunity to get everyone in the holiday spirit by sending a special gift package that included a gift card and a packet of hot chocolate.

Why hot chocolate? The idea was that everyone could make themselves a piping hot cup to enjoy during the holiday party. “We wanted to provide a sense of being together even if we couldn’t be there in-person,” Alissa explained. 

All I Want for Christmas is…an Ugly Sweater(?)

If there’s one thing the Event Ninjas team learned after nearly a year of online meetings, it’s that any successful virtual event begins with a clear plan and a strong theme. The last thing they wanted to see was a bunch of faces staring blankly at their screen like they were waiting to discuss the latest marketing numbers (which, of course, is a very exciting conversation topic). They knew the party would need a compelling visual theme that would encourage everyone to tune in and get involved.

And what could possibly be more compelling than ugly holiday sweaters?

Everyone was encouraged to break out their most ghastly holiday apparel and prepare to cast their virtual votes for which sweater was a true “Nightmare Before Christmas.” The theme had everyone buzzing ahead of the event, which was just what the Event Ninjas team hoped for.

Party Time!

When the big day arrived, nearly the entire company logged into a “crowded” virtual meeting room to celebrate the occasion. Amazingly, the server didn’t immediately crash when confronted with so many ugly holiday sweaters all at one time! After taking in all the sweaters on display, everyone settled in with their hot chocolate to go over some of the highlights from one of the most unusual years in memory.

2020 Milestones

Life didn’t stop completely during the COVID 19 pandemic. Several Accusoft team members experienced personal milestones in 2020, including getting married, becoming a parent, buying a home, or getting a pet. The first portion of the holiday party was dedicated to these moments and to sharing work-related memories.

One of the most noteworthy events for the company was senior software engineer John Reynolds receiving a patent from the US Patent and Trademark Office. It was his third patent awarded during his time at Accusoft, a testament to our continued emphasis on innovation. We couldn’t be happier for John and are eager to see what he has in store next.

“We always want the holiday party to be a celebration of our employees,” Alissa said. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to recognize the people who make Accusoft successful.”

Service Awards

After the team shared their best memories and milestones for the year, Accusoft CEO Jack Berlin took the virtual mic to present a record number of distinguished service awards for the company. This year saw an unprecedented number of work anniversaries, with 22 people celebrating at least five years with Accusoft. 

• Five Year Anniversary Award: 10 recipients
• Ten Year Anniversary Award: 6 recipients
• FIfteen Year Anniversary Award: 3 recipients
• Twenty Year Anniversary Award: 3 recipients

When discussions about the virtual holiday party began, Alissa knew they had to make this section the centerpiece of the event: “It’s really important that we take the time to focus on these special employees. We want people to know that the company supports them and cares about them.”

And the Winner Is…

One popular portion of the holiday party that made a surprisingly smooth transition to a virtual context was the gift raffle. In years past, of course, the raffle was held in person and usually involved a long process of drawing names and having people walk up to the front of the room to receive their gift.

This year, the raffle turned out to be a fast and furious event thanks to the use of a virtual prize wheel that was preloaded with the names of raffle participants. Rather than dealing with multiple drawings, the Event Ninjas team could move from prize to prize with the click of a button and easily spin the wheel to randomly select a winner. It was fast, easy, and exciting. In fact, the team is even considering using the prize wheel for the next in-person holiday event!

Looking Ahead

After weeks/months of careful planning, our 2020 virtual holiday event went off without a hitch. While we’re looking forward to a return to in-person gatherings at some point in the next year, it’s good to know that our resourceful Event Ninjas team is more than up to the challenge of arranging a successful company-wide virtual event.

More importantly, we’re glad we could provide a platform for recognizing the success of our employees after this challenging year. Even though we were unable to gather in person, we were still able to celebrate everything that the Accusoft family has accomplished together. We’re looking forward to accomplishing even more in 2021.

For over 30 years, Accusoft has developed groundbreaking digital imaging technology that has revolutionized the way applications manage and process content. From high-resolution image compression and file format conversion to data extraction and barcode recognition, Accusoft technology can be found in some of the most sophisticated and widely used software in the world. The company’s enduring success is built upon a combination of patented engineering innovations and key strategic acquisitions.

Humble Beginnings and Early Success

The origins of Accusoft go back to the late 1980s, when founder and CEO Jack Berlin got a hands-on look at one of the first digital cameras at a trade show and developed an interest in the nascent technology.

“I just fell in love with it and wanted to get involved in digital imaging,” he recalls. That desire led Berlin to found Pegasus Imaging Corporation in September of 1991. “It started as a hobby, but it became serious pretty fast.”

The company quickly found its niche selling innovative image compression and decompression technology that software developers could incorporate into their applications. Over the next decade, Pegasus Imaging made a name for itself thanks to advancements in lossy and lossless JPEG compression that were adopted by leading photo imaging companies such as Kodak, Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, and Konica Minolta.

In 1998, Pegasus Imaging expanded into medical imaging with the groundbreaking PICTools Medical SDK. The company quickly made a splash in the market by solving the infamous “DICOM bug” associated with the Cornell codec, an open-source codec frequently used for lossless JPEG compression. Pegasus Imaging’s engineers were able to identify why the codec rendered some images unreadable after decompression and provide a means of both compressing images safely and decompressing files once thought to be corrupted beyond repair. That ability to quickly solve imaging problems helped make PICTools Medical a major success with some of the world’s largest medical technology companies, including GE Healthcare, McKesson, Philips Medical Systems, Siemens Medical Solutions, and Toshiba.

Evolution and Expansion

Although Pegasus Imaging enjoyed a great deal of success in its first decade, Berlin knew the company needed to grow if it was going to retain a competitive edge in the 21st century.

“The challenge with the technology business is you have to improve it or lose it,” he says. “You don’t get to sell the same product ten years later. You have to continue to innovate.”

The early 2000s saw Pegasus Imaging embark on a series of acquisitions that helped expand its business and continue pushing the boundaries of innovating in digital imaging. Each merger involved a strategic consideration of how it would position the company to evolve to meet the complex challenges of the future.

“People typically want to buy growth, but we look at it differently,” Berlin says. “We’re a big believer that the reason to buy companies is their customers, their products, and their people. Products are worth nothing without their people.”

In 2004, Pegasus Imaging acquired TMSSequoia, which had developed the most sophisticated structured forms processing and document image cleanup technology in the world. The people behind that technology, however, proved even more valuable to the growing company, contributing to the development of several proprietary innovations over the years that followed. Their ongoing contributions can be seen in products like FormSuite, which remains an industry leader in forms processing technology.

The TMSSequoia acquisition, along with the development of its lightning fast ImagXpress toolkit, set Pegasus Imaging on the path to becoming a much bigger player in the document imaging market. Its next major acquisition came in 2008 with the purchase of AccuSoft, a Massachusetts-based imaging software company best known for its powerful ImageGear SDK. No sooner had the deal closed, then Pegasus Imaging expanded once again by acquiring the UK-based Tasman Software, which had developed groundbreaking barcode recognition technology that would eventually be incorporated into the popular Barcode Xpress SDK product.

Over the course of just a few years, Pegasus Imaging had greatly expanded its portfolio of document imaging and processing solutions by strategically identifying the technology and engineering talent that could fuel the company’s growth. To Berlin, making the most of those acquisition opportunities are critical to sustained success in a competitive industry:

“It’s grow or die. We’re up against larger and larger competitors. Consolidation gives you market share and economies of scale. If profitability goes up, you can invest in new product development, marketing, and growth.”

In 2009, Pegasus Imaging changed its name to Accusoft Pegasus to rebrand the company as a key player to watch in the document imaging and processing industry.

Integration and Innovation

The acquisition of AccuSoft expanded the company’s market share and expertise, but it also created a new challenge for the engineering team. AccuSoft’s ImageGear SDK frequently competed directly with Pegasus Imaging’s ImagXpress. While there was no question that the newly rebranded Accusoft Pegasus would continue to support customers using these products, strategic decisions had to be made about their respective futures.

As the team evaluated each product, it quickly became clear they were the result of very different approaches to software development.

“ImagXpress was much easier to use, but it didn’t have all the platforms and features of ImageGear,” Berlin recalls. “Their idea was to throw everything but the kitchen sink into the product, and if somebody complained, fix it. Pegasus wanted to make everything perfect and add features very slowly. I think there was a happy medium there somewhere.”

ImageGear’s ability to support multiple platforms and the rapid development of modern compilers eventually made it a more attractive SDK for developers, but the Accusoft Pegasus team incorporated the best features of ImagXpress into it to make ImageGear an even better product. Throughout the integration, the company put new processes into place to strike a balance between speed and perfection. Product management structures were also established to improve feedback loops, lay down feature roadmaps, and keep to development timelines without compromising quality.

All of these lessons would prove invaluable when Accusoft Pegasus acquired Adeptol in 2011 and added the company’s AJAX Document Viewer to its portfolio. While Adeptol’s browser-based viewing technology was undoubtedly innovative and correctly predicted what future web applications would require from viewing integrations, the product itself was Flash-based. In addition to being a proprietary technology, Flash contained multiple security vulnerabilities and was already on the decline by 2011.

The Accusoft Pegasus team got to work rebuilding the viewer using HTML5, making it much easier for developers to incorporate viewing features into web-based applications. As the new product took shape, it also allowed the company to expand into the growing market for cloud-based API integration products. Released as Prizm Content Connect in 2012, the HTML5 viewer would be rebranded in 2016 as PrizmDoc.

30 Years of Growth and Innovation

In 2012, Accusoft Pegasus rebranded once again to become Accusoft. Today, the company remains a pillar of the tech community in Tampa, FL even as it strives to expand its business globally. In 2021, Accusoft celebrated its 30th anniversary, a significant milestone for a privately held, employee-owned corporation that began as a hobby.

For Berlin, those humble origins and the long journey to success are what make a company like Accusoft special.

“It’s not just dollars and cents, but a sense of pride and competitiveness,” he says. “It stops being about money at some decimal point. It’s about the people and the legacy and seeing what you can do. We give back a lot to our community. I really enjoy that. We participate in our community, both in tech forums and charity drives and work days. If we cease being Accusoft or cease being Accusoft in Tampa, FL, that’s gone.”

Accusoft and Snowbound Join Forces

That same sense of pride and passion was shared by Simon Wieczner, President, CEO, and co-founder of Snowbound Software. Established in 1996, Snowbound first made a name for itself in the document imaging market with the RasterMaster conversion and imaging SDK. RasterMaster supports hundreds of formats and uses proprietary technology to quickly convert, archive, and display files in high resolution without loss of fidelity.

As two of the leading innovators in document imaging integrations, Snowbound and Accusoft routinely found themselves competing for the same customers over the years. “We were competitors, but not fierce competitors,” Wieczner recalls. “We would mostly run into each other at trade shows and talk about the market.”

Berlin first floated the idea of merging the two companies around 2015, but it wasn’t until much later that acquisition conversations turned serious. With so much money being invested in the tech industry over the previous decade, Snowbound had already received substantial interest from potential buyers, but most of the offers didn’t sit well with Wieczner.

“There’s been a craze over the last few years of growth equity companies looking for SDK companies,” he says. “They were offering good dollars, but without understanding our technology. So there was a little bit of distrust on my part. Some actually wanted to outsource everything and that would totally destroy the company.”

Many potential suitors were primarily interested in incorporating Snowbound’s technology into their own products rather than supporting existing customers and continuing to sell into the market. As conversations with Accusoft continued to progress, Wieczner realized that he’d already found the ideal acquisition partner.

“Accusoft understood the market, what our company did, and how we could fit together,” he says. “That’s why we felt ready to move on together.”

“Both Simon and I are passionate about the success of the company,” Berlin says. “It’s what small business people do. We tend to worship entrepreneurs that get in, build a shell, and get out with a billion dollars, but I don’t know if they’re fulfilled because there’s such fulfillment in seeing what you’ve built accomplish something.”

In late 2022, the companies moved ahead with a deal that saw Accusoft acquire Snowbound. The merger brings Snowbound’s RasterMaster^® and VirtualViewer^® products into the portfolio of Accusoft solutions:

• RasterMaster^®: A Java-based conversion and imaging SDK, RasterMaster can be incorporated into applications for all computing platforms, including Unix, Linux, Windows, and Mac. The SDK supports hundreds of document types through its proprietary format library and provides a variety of document imaging tools, such as annotations, redactions, OCR, text extraction, and image cleanup.
• PrizmDoc^® for Java, formerly VirtualViewer^®: Developed to meet the demanding needs of the banking industry, PrizmDoc® for Java is an HTML5-based viewer that can be easily incorporated into web applications to allow users to view, annotate, and redact documents and images from any platform, anywhere. PrizmDoc® for Java’s library of APIs and out-of-the-box connectors for popular ECM applications (including Alfresco, IBM, and Pegasystems) make it a powerful tool for developers looking to quickly integrate advanced document workflow capabilities.

The Future

In keeping with Accusoft’s long history of strategic acquisitions, the Snowbound merger brings with it an influx of new customers, new technology, and new talent into the Accusoft family. Those resources will help the company to continue investing in innovation to compete in an increasingly high-stakes market.

“It’s a real challenge to incorporate other companies and take that risk, but they’ve done well with it,” Wieczner says. “We were deliberate in selecting an organization with a leadership team and product portfolio that would continue to grow, develop, and nurture what we have built at Snowbound.”

With three decades of experience and success to draw upon, Accusoft is better positioned than ever to meet the evolving needs of its customers and deliver a new generation of document imaging products powered by groundbreaking technology.

As the software industry continues to transition to web-based applications and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions, developers are prioritizing flexibility more than ever. Building a unique and compelling customer experience frequently requires versatile software toolkits that are easy to customize and adapt to changing requirements.  Customizing the PrizmDoc Viewer interface makes this simple.

Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Viewer is an HTML5 viewing integration that not only provides an extensive array of viewing, conversion, and annotation features, but was also designed with customization in mind. Creative developers have several options at their disposal when they deploy this innovative solution within their applications.

PrizmDoc Viewer Interface Basics

Once PrizmDoc Viewer is integrated into an application, developers can deploy the pre-built user interface to start viewing documents and image files. Out of the box, the viewer consists of a number of components:

• Tab Navigation: PrizmDoc Viewer can perform a variety of different functions, such as basic viewing, annotation, and redaction. The Tab Navigation indicates which function is currently active.
• Tab Pane: Each tabset selected in the Navigation features a specific set of tools. They can be configured to display either vertically or horizontally.
• Status Bar: This component indicates the current page being viewed. By selecting a different page number, a user can quickly jump to another document page.
• Dialog: Extended options and settings are displayed in this menu area.
• Context Menu: Used primarily for markups, this menu allows users to change annotation properties.
• Page List: The core element of the viewer control, this component is where the document or image itself is rendered for viewing.

Any of these tabs can be disabled easily by altering the configuration parameters. For example, to disable the navigation tab for redaction, the following code could be applied:

var pluginOptions = {
    uiElements: {
        redactTab: false
    }
};

Customizing the Viewer

While developers can simply deploy the viewer interface as-is, PrizmDoc Viewer provides extensive customization features that allow them to change almost every aspect of the viewing experience. The viewer’s functionality itself is built upon the Viewer API, so changing different elements of the viewing interface doesn’t alter the rendering performance or other core PrizmDoc Viewer functionality.

Here are just a few quick customization options that can be added to the viewer with minimal effort:

Custom Buttons

Adding a customized button that performs a specific task can greatly improve the viewer’s functionality for end users. Developers can quickly add custom buttons with a bit of JavaScript and uploading an SVG icon for display.

Keyboard Shortcuts

The PrizmDoc Viewer interface already supports a variety of keyboard shortcuts that allow users to easily scroll up and down the page, adjust the zoom level, and delete selected marks. Developers can alter the existing key bindings to enable new shortcuts or create their own.

Customize Style

In order to provide a consistent brand experience, many developers choose to alter the look and feel of the viewer to match the rest of their application. PrizmDoc Viewer provides extensive controls that allow them to alter image resources, colors, toolbar sizing, icons, and more.

Reorganize Menus

All of the menus and navigation elements can be adjusted based on application needs. Developers can add or remove different viewer templates that feature unique elements for specific use cases. Each template could use different styles and feature custom tabs or markup tools.

Create/Customize Mouse Tools

Unique mouse tools can be created along with a custom button within the UI, although PrizmDoc Viewer comes with a variety of predefined mouse tools that can be deployed and customized. Creating a new mouse tool is a quick two-step process that involves some JavaScript code that first defines the tool and then updates the UI to add a button for it (usually in the annotation tab pane).

Step 1

// Create the new mouse tool. var myTool = PCCViewer.MouseTools.createMouseTool(
                 "PinkLine",
                 PCCViewer.MouseTool.Type.LineAnnotation);

// Configure the tool to draw a pink (#FF69B4) line that is 10 pixel thick myTool.getTemplateMark()
    .setColor("#FF69B4")
    .setThickness(10);

Step 2

<!-- The following markup will create a button that enables use
     of the mouse tool named "PinkLine".

     The custom attributes that are used:
      \* data-pcc-mouse-tool="PinkLine" - specifies that the button selects the mouse tool named "MyLineTool"
      \* data-pcc-context-menu="false" - specifies that a context menu is not shown for this mouse tool
     -->
<button>
    data-pcc-mouse-tool="PinkLine"
    data-pcc-context-menu="false"
    class\="pcc-icon pcc-icon-annotate-line"
    title="Pink Line Tool"\></button>

Build a Customized UI

Developers may decide that the default PrizmDoc Viewer UI isn’t quite right for their application needs. In such cases, they can easily use the available components to build a customized viewing UI that is better suited to their application and end users. Creating a custom interface allows developers to strategically place menu and button elements to improve application workflows and conform to their own user experience priorities.

Embrace the Power of Flexibility

Turning to a third-party solution for an application’s viewing and imaging needs doesn’t mean a developer has to give up control over their application’s user experience. Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Viewer delivers powerful viewing, conversion, and annotation features in a fully customizable package that can be adapted to a wide range of application needs. Developers can use the available tools to craft a unique viewing experience from the ground up or utilize the built-in viewing interface to get their solution up and running quickly while putting off customization until later in their development cycle.

PrizmDoc Viewer’s versatile HTML5 rendering technology makes it an ideal integration for web-based applications that need the flexibility to adapt to changing user expectations. Thanks to those customization options, the application a developer brings to market can evolve over time to support a wide range of additional features throughout the product’s lifecycle. To experience the customizable power of PrizmDoc Viewer firsthand, download your free trial today.