The following discussion between a customer and our chief developer is noteworthy, and thus I felt compelled to post it on our blog.  The full message has been edited, but the key points are made.

Q. Is there any limitation in the creation process of a template?  I am asking this question because i am getting an error message “Can’t create valid template from selected region”.

A. The only limitation in creating templates involves the lack of “uniqueness” within the selected region; there is no limit to the size. In an extreme example, if you select a region which is just the white background of an envelope or piece of paper, there is nothing distinct enough within that region to allow that “logo” to be uniquely found in another image so the template generator will issue the error message. The template generation process makes a decision if the selected region is “unique enough” to allow it to be reliably found in other images. This decision is part of a our goal to not issue false reads, i.e., say a logo is present in an image when it is not.

Let me try to simply what the engineer is saying, the template generation process is designed to look for unique features that can be learned and thus easily found in an image of any size.  The template generator is smart enough to realize when you select a region that has nothing in it, or something is too small to be recognized easily.

So when creating templates, if there is a logo “icon” and “text”,  as can be found in say the AT &T logo, it is better to select both the “icon” and the “text”.  If there are situations where the “icon” may be on a document on its own without the text (for example, only the AT&T globe), then we recommend creating two templates, one for the “icon” and one for the “icon” and “text”.