> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.abbyy.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Image enhancement
> Enhance scanned images with the Scanning Station image enhancement panel: autocrop, noise and blur removal, deskew, brightness, and despeckle tools.
You edit images to correct distortions, mainly when processing photos of documents (including from mobile devices) and scans with complex backgrounds that impede recognition and data extraction, such as certificates and passports. This stage improves recognition results for low-quality images.
## Open the image enhancement panel
The image enhancement panel lets an Operator create a sequence of editing actions that are applied to pages one by one, from top to bottom.
To open it, use one of the following ways:
* Click the **Enhance Image** button on the image editing toolbar.
* Select **Enhance Image** on the **Page** menu.
* Select **Enhance Image** on a page's context menu.
To automatically edit a flow of images, see [Image enhancement profiles](/flexi-capture/scanning-station/shared/scan-station/how-to-image-enhancement-profile).
## Enhance an image
In the batch window, select the image to process. It opens in the image window.
On the image enhancement panel, turn on the tools you need with the toggle to the right of each action. See [Image editing tools](#image-editing-tools) for what each tool does.
The order can matter, for example, when you need to adjust brightness and contrast before removing color elements.
Some actions have a fixed position, but you can reposition others:
* Hover over the vertical ellipsis to the left of the action name, then click and hold the left mouse button and move the action.
* Select an action, hold **Shift**, and move it with the up and down arrow keys.
Click **Apply** to apply the changes, or **Reset** to discard them.
To apply editing changes automatically when you select an action, enable **Auto Apply**. Auto-apply takes some time.
After any editing action, you can [restore the original image](/flexi-capture/scanning-station/shared/interface/image-processing-options#back-to-source).
## Image editing tools
| Tool | Description |
| ---------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Autocrop** | Finds page boundaries, crops the area that contains data for extraction, and corrects skew and distortion. Three modes are available: **Generic**, **Photo**, and **Scan**. |
| **Remove ISO Noise** | Removes noise from an image. |
| **Remove Motion Blur** | Removes blur caused by moving a document, camera, or scanner. |
| **Photo Correction** | Corrects photographed documents. **Whiten Background** whitens the image background. **Equalize Brightness** equalizes the image brightness. |
| **Remove Color Marks** | Removes all color marks from an image. Select **Remove marks of specified colors only** to remove marks of a chosen color. If that option is cleared, all color marks except grayscale marks are deleted. For example, to delete blue stamps but keep green headings, select the option and choose a color. |
| **Deskew** | Corrects image skew, using either **Use black separators to correct skew** or **Use black squares to correct skew**. |
| **Remove Geometrical Distortions** | Removes geometrical distortions. Deskewing is built into **Autocrop**, so if you already selected **Autocrop**, you can leave this option disabled. |
| **Remove Scanner Shadow** | Removes scanner shadow from an image. |
| **Brightness & Contrast** | Adjusts the brightness and contrast of an image. |
| **Convert to B\&W** | Converts color and gray images to black and white. |
| **Despeckle** | Removes small extra elements from an image. Applies only to black-and-white images. If the source text is very light or has thin type and you set the size of the elements to despeckle, make sure significant elements such as punctuation marks and thin letter parts are not deleted. |
To change the background color that appears beyond the edges of the image during deskewing, set the `DeskewColor` value under the `[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ABBYY\ScanStationFC\4.0\Shell\PageView]` registry subkey to `redComp + greenComp*256 + blueComp*256*256`. If the value is unspecified or set to `4294967295`, the background color is determined automatically.