|
I have two flatbed scanners -- An Opticbook 3600 and an Epson Perfection 1670. Both are fast as flatbed scanners go. Obviously you need to have USB 2 on your PC -- USB 1.1 is too damn slow.
Scanning on a flatbed don't take me much time - its the proofreading afterwards that is time consuming. This has to be done even if you have an expensive and fast sheet feeder scanner. I scan paperbacks two pages at a time using Abbyy Fine Reader 8. (I find the Abbyy FR Lite that often comes free with a new scanner totally useless). Whether you scan in portrait or landscape mode Abbyy is clever enough to sort out the orientation. Spell-checking and scanning errors are very easy to correct using the tools that come with Abbyy FR.
You can, of course, scan straight to PDF. This is a very quick way of producing ebooks but with one problem -- the resulting PDF file will display very nicely on a PC but I find the result too small to read on any ebook reading device. I prefer to OCR, proofread, and set a pagesize and fontsize to suit my reader. If anyone knows how to scan PDFs to a smaller page size / larger font size please let me know because this really is the fastest way.
I scan at 300 dpi, greyscale and set the scanner so that it scans the area of the book only. It's a waste of time if the scanner beam moves over the whole A4 bed.
The OpticBook 3600 is great for hardbacks - but limited for paper backs because it needs a minimum 6mm gutter on the book which paperbacks do not usually have. It is possible of course, to use the OpticBook in the same way as any other flatbed scanner - two pages at a time - which necessitates pressing down on the spine of the book to ensure it is as flat to the glass as possible.
|