Quote:
Originally Posted by NVash
Sir, I must also ask. Id like to scan some of my own books and tried it once before, it took me forever to get one page done. Then again I had to bend the book in half and scan the same page over and over until it came out right, I have a printer / scanner. I'm sure I'm doing this wrong. What kind of scanner do you use? What program do you use? Where can I get both? Could you provide any and all information to help me on this? Please, I cant tell you how grateful I would be.
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I cut the bindings with an industrial paper-cutter like this one:
http://www.officezone.com/intelli-cu...per-cutter.htm
Many copy shops have one; they're not recommended for the home office unless you chop up a *lot* of stacks of paper. For profit, because they're really not worth having for occasional home use.
Other people use a razor or exacto blade and a ruler and cut through books page-by-page.
Home all-in-one print/scan/copy machines are awful for scanning. The software tends to be very limited, and assumes you want to scan one page at a time--like a letter and envelope; it's not designed to scan hundreds of pages one after the other. (Doesn't mean it won't work but there's often no shortcuts built in for bulk scanning.)
I usually scan with Acrobat Pro; sometimes I use Photoshop. Sometimes I scan straight to Abbyy Finereader. (Those probably aren't helpful.)
Irfanview has scan settings, and scan-batch settings, and it's free & open source.
I use two scanners at home: a
Canon LIDE 30 for flatbed things (it's out of production, but I'm sure there's some obviously similar newer scanner); it's USB powered and tiny. I have a Fujitsu duplex scanner for everything else; I don't remember the model number but it's the predecessor to the ScanSnap, which is better. (And available. And comes with a version of FineReader if you buy it new, which is great.)
Scanning flatbed without chopping the spines off is time-consuming and takes practice to learn the tricks. (Or you can go the diyscanner route, and set up a v-shaped "platform" with two digital cameras aiming at the pages.) For flatbed, you have to be able to press the book down firmly enough to have all the text clearly against the glass; some print/scan machines are too fragile to do that with all books.
The Opticbook is a good option; it's got an edge designed for putting half a book over so it doesn't have to lie completely flat. I haven't had access to one so I can't speak to its abilities directly, but it seems to fix exactly the problems with most flatbed scanners.