Today most of the data we receive and process is digitized and supplied as files, spreadsheets, and other forms of computer data. However, if we want to make use of the maps, or some old graphs, we are in trouble.

Engauge Digitizer is a proper solution. This open source, digitizing software converts an image file showing a graph or map, into numbers. The image file can come from a scanner, digital camera or screenshot. The numbers can be read on the screen, and written or copied to a spreadsheet.

User starts with a graphic file containing map or a grapgh. he final result is digitized data that can be used by other tools such as Microsoft Excel and Gnumeric.

Engauge Digitizer is available for a wide variety of platforms (Linux, Mac OSX, Windows). And it is licensed as Open Source.

Here are some real-life situations, in which the application will be useful:

• You are an engineer with some graphs in decades-old documents, but you really need the numbers represented in those graphs so you can do analyses that will determine if a space vehicle is safe to fly.
• You are a graduate student gathering historical data from charts for your thesis.
• You are a webmaster with visitor statistics charts and you want to do statistical analyses.
• You ride a bike or boat and want to know how much distance you covered in your last trip, but you do not have an odometer or GPS unit. However, you do have a map.