2. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising automatically identifying page numbers of said document, using said processor, said creating said cropped-image index including said page numbers in said cropped-image index to correlate said cropped-image portions of said raster images with corresponding ones of said page numbers of said document.
1. A method comprising: receiving a document using an optical scanner comprising raster images; automatically identifying topical items within said raster images based only on distinct font styles of images of text characters in said raster images, using a processor, said images of text characters being pixel-based and being distinct from recognized characters produced in optical character recognition processing; automatically ranking said topical items based on previously established rules for identifying topical sections in documents, using said processor; automatically filtering said topical items based on said ranking to identify highest-ranking topical items, using said processor; automatically associating said highest-ranking topical items with topics and subtopics in said document based on said previously established rules, using said processor; automatically cropping said highest-ranking topical items from said raster images by copying pixel patterns of said topical items within said raster images to produce cropped-image portions of said raster images, using said processor; automatically creating a cropped-image index for said document by combining said cropped-image portions of said raster images organized by said topics and subtopics, using said processor, said cropped-image index comprising multiple ones of said cropped-image portions combined together and organized by said topics and subtopics; and outputting said cropped-image index from said processor.