It can be seen that pictorial image 92 retains substantially the same recognizable character shape in FIG. 8 as shown in FIG. 7 in the original image. [0036] Because scanned pictorial images can often be interpreted visually rather than digitally, as with a data encoded image such as shown in FIG. 1, errorless scanning of a pictorial image such as the smiling face in FIG. 7 is less critical than i