Scanned in book only works sideways, or upside down

PGA · 03-12-2010, 05:48 AM

I scanned in a academic book to my PRS 600, put somehow the sony library can only read the letters and able it to the reader if i edit the PDF sideways or upside down in a PDF creator. Anybody know why that is?

Xochipilli2012 · 03-12-2010, 12:47 PM

It sounds like you scanned it in as "image only" and didn't use any OCR (optical character recognition) software to translate the shapes into actual text. If you want to try to live with that, there are tools around that can help you--like pdflrf and pdfcropper (there are threads which discuss these here on MR). I believe they can trim out white space and section scanned image into smaller pieces that each display larger on a reader, and can even assemble them into an LRF file the Sony can read. The files end up being rather largish, compared to a properly formatted, text-based eBook file.

That would be the "quick and dirty" method.

The better approach, IMO, would be to use some OCR software to extract the text, and then if you save in HTML you can use Calibre to convert it into the eBook format of your pleasure.

Good luck!

frabjous · 03-12-2010, 03:01 PM

I'd be rather wary of trying to get useful results by applying OCR to a scanned academic book -- academic books tend to have things like mathematical or other technical symbols, tables and charts, etc., none of which will survive OCR very well. Unless you're willing to reconstruct all that stuff manually, I'd keep it image based. (Unless it just happens to be all straight text, in which case, go ahead and give it a try.)

The question is: are the pages upside down or sideways in the scan? How does the file open in Adobe reader, for example? Do you need to rotate it there to read it on your screen? If so, there are lots of tools to turn them around the right way. pdftk comes to mind, though there are others.

I second the recommendation for PaperCrop and especially pdflrf, but even those might not work properly until the pages in the scan are oriented the right way.

03-12-2010, 05:48 AM	#1
PGA Junior Member Posts: 9 Karma: 25648 Join Date: Mar 2010 Device: Sony PRS-600	Scanned in book only works sideways, or upside down I scanned in a academic book to my PRS 600, put somehow the sony library can only read the letters and able it to the reader if i edit the PDF sideways or upside down in a PDF creator. Anybody know why that is?

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03-12-2010, 12:47 PM	#2
Xochipilli2012 Zealot Posts: 101 Karma: 38 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Seattle Device: Red PRS-600, Slate Blue Astak EZReader Pocket Pro	It sounds like you scanned it in as "image only" and didn't use any OCR (optical character recognition) software to translate the shapes into actual text. If you want to try to live with that, there are tools around that can help you--like pdflrf and pdfcropper (there are threads which discuss these here on MR). I believe they can trim out white space and section scanned image into smaller pieces that each display larger on a reader, and can even assemble them into an LRF file the Sony can read. The files end up being rather largish, compared to a properly formatted, text-based eBook file. That would be the "quick and dirty" method. The better approach, IMO, would be to use some OCR software to extract the text, and then if you save in HTML you can use Calibre to convert it into the eBook format of your pleasure. Good luck!

03-12-2010, 03:01 PM	#3
frabjous Wizard Posts: 1,213 Karma: 12890 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Amherst, Massachusetts, USA Device: Sony PRS-505	I'd be rather wary of trying to get useful results by applying OCR to a scanned academic book -- academic books tend to have things like mathematical or other technical symbols, tables and charts, etc., none of which will survive OCR very well. Unless you're willing to reconstruct all that stuff manually, I'd keep it image based. (Unless it just happens to be all straight text, in which case, go ahead and give it a try.) The question is: are the pages upside down or sideways in the scan? How does the file open in Adobe reader, for example? Do you need to rotate it there to read it on your screen? If so, there are lots of tools to turn them around the right way. pdftk comes to mind, though there are others. I second the recommendation for PaperCrop and especially pdflrf, but even those might not work properly until the pages in the scan are oriented the right way.

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