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Old 07-13-2008, 01:18 PM   #1
Joshua
Junior Member
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Posts: 6
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Join Date: Jul 2008
Device: Dell M1330
Help needed moving pBooks to PDFs (jpg) + Snapter Review

Hello everyone,

A newb here, overwhelmed with the task of migrating some books to PDF. I found mobileread through some links about the Opticbook 3600 and Atiz's Snapter software and got lost in the v-cradle threads 0_o The number of book readers (I am using a laptop / Acrobat reader) and acronymns has me a little lost

Here is my "agenda" and hopefully someone else has found a solution for my problem and won't mind spending a minute dropping me a link or two

Goal:

=> Capture the pages of my books (either with a digital camera or scanner; camera is faster)

=> Split, crop the pages

=> Collate them in the right order and save them as a single PDF file (eBook)

=> Happily read my books on my PC, using Zotero (www.zotero.org) to document my notes as I work on my thesis

Snapter targeted my exact needs and almost worked perfectly, but the flaws I found won't cut it right now. I put my "feedback" I sent Atiz below. Anyhow, I believe I can:

* Take pictures of my books (digicam, glass over book) for adequate quality

* Using Fireworks I can crop my pictures and batch convert them

So my big QUESTIONS:


(1) Is there Software to merge 200-400 jpgs into a single PDF file. PDFRead 1.8.2 sounded perfect but it doesn't say it outputs to PDF


(2) Is there a better solution for what I am trying to do that I have overlooked? I am a student on a budget. The Opticbook 360 was a little too expensive and the driver issues people had and slow speed turned me off. I cannot afford a $300 paperweight! $49 for Snapter was a fair price as it did everything from start to finish.


And two bonus questions:


(3) Is there a mobile reader that will display graphic based PDFs? If I am going to go to the work of converting my books to PDFs, is there a mobile reader that will work ok with PDFs of books that are scanned graphics?


(4) Does the commercial Adobe Acrobat mimic Google Books and Amazon in allowing you to OCR a book "in the background" and read the graphic but search the hidden text? I ask because my books have a lot of mixed languages (theology) and I cannot have errors via OCR. But being able to search on an as needed basis would be cool.


Thanks for everyone's time Maybe someone else who has had the same hurdles has a far better solution for me!

Joshua
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