A system and method for capturing and scaling images includes a scaling engine with the ability to employ a first scaling factor in a first direction and a second scaling factor in a second direction. In addition, the preferred scaling engine manipulates the scaling process so that the scaling calculations are performed using fixed point arithmetic. The preferred scaling engine preserves isolated features such as a single white pixel in a field of black pixels and vice versa. Improved readability is achieved in one embodiment by performing the scaling process multiple times using different degrees of "padding" where padding refers to the technique of surrounding an image with a perimeter of one or more blank (white) pixel elements.