MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - I found way to vastly improve displaying of text!

Paul Moews · 10-04-2006, 02:51 PM

I too have been very impressed by the Iliad.

I want to preserve the look and feel of old books and when the Iliad
came out I was excited at the thought of displaying books sized below
4 x 6 inches just as they were when freshly printed. Some of them
have very nice fonts.

Unfortunately they don't look so good on the Iliad - jagged edges from
downscaling either by Adobe Acrobat or by the Iliad software. Malder1's
ideas and this thread have enabled me to make things a bit better.

I took a page that fits within the display field of the Iliad - ca.
4 x 5.8 inches and scanned it in in color at 600 dpi - then reduced it
to 158 dpi-bicubic reduction- in adobe photoworkshop and converted to grayscale.
Much better when displayed on the Iliad but a bit washed out. Going back to
adobe photoworkshop I increased the input levels to make the output darker.
Again much better. I could collect the png's with adobe acrobat to make a
PDB which was much closer to the original.

This would only be practical if I could write a batch command for adobe
photoworkshop - might be ok if the books pages are uniform so that all pages
needed the same input level increase.

Unfortunately I have scanned in over 300 books at 600 bpi as bitmaps. They
look fine in adobe reader on a good display and I don't fell much like
scanning them all in again.

My scanner is a Fujitsu scan snap - with delicate pages I often feed them in
one at a time - it doesn't take much more time than feeding in stacks and
there are fewer sheets stuck together. It was only $350.

Any comments - do I really need to go to exactly 158 dpi? Can I do anything
to fix up the books I have already scanned?

10-04-2006, 02:51 PM	#25
Paul Moews Enthusiast Posts: 32 Karma: 12 Join Date: Jul 2006	some improvement in scanned images of text I too have been very impressed by the Iliad. I want to preserve the look and feel of old books and when the Iliad came out I was excited at the thought of displaying books sized below 4 x 6 inches just as they were when freshly printed. Some of them have very nice fonts. Unfortunately they don't look so good on the Iliad - jagged edges from downscaling either by Adobe Acrobat or by the Iliad software. Malder1's ideas and this thread have enabled me to make things a bit better. I took a page that fits within the display field of the Iliad - ca. 4 x 5.8 inches and scanned it in in color at 600 dpi - then reduced it to 158 dpi-bicubic reduction- in adobe photoworkshop and converted to grayscale. Much better when displayed on the Iliad but a bit washed out. Going back to adobe photoworkshop I increased the input levels to make the output darker. Again much better. I could collect the png's with adobe acrobat to make a PDB which was much closer to the original. This would only be practical if I could write a batch command for adobe photoworkshop - might be ok if the books pages are uniform so that all pages needed the same input level increase. Unfortunately I have scanned in over 300 books at 600 bpi as bitmaps. They look fine in adobe reader on a good display and I don't fell much like scanning them all in again. My scanner is a Fujitsu scan snap - with delicate pages I often feed them in one at a time - it doesn't take much more time than feeding in stacks and there are fewer sheets stuck together. It was only $350. Any comments - do I really need to go to exactly 158 dpi? Can I do anything to fix up the books I have already scanned?