[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by roger64

I certainly does not wish to indulge in page by page settings, through many manual tweakings, though I willingly admit there are some botched/damaged pages that may require some special treatment.

Then you'd set the setting once, then "apply to all pages" (or only even or only odd):



It would act the same as the old Scan Tailor.

Below almost all settings, there's a little "Apply To..." button, and you get those options.

Originally Posted by roger64

However, I've found its use to be much more complex and I reverted to the old scan tailor package.

What's more complex?

All those original steps are there, but added a few more optional bells and whistles on top. For example:

• Old Despeckling buttons: "Cautious, Normal, Aggressive".
  
  • Now, you actually get a slider to specify the exact strength.
    
  • Cautious = 1.0, Normal = 2.0, Aggressive = 3.0
• Accepting PNG and other image formats as input.
  
  • The original was stuck with TIFF only.

From what I recall, Scan Tailor Advanced (and the other forks) carried over everything from the original Scan Tailor, plus added better features on top.

I haven't used the original in such a long time though, so I don't remember... but I do remember upgrading to Enhanced when I saw how much better it was, then was sold on Advanced the instant it was mentioned to me in 2018.

Originally Posted by roger64

Some weeks ago, scan tailor advanced has replaced scan tailor for Arch linux users.

The original Scan Tailor was already inactive/abandoned many years ago.

Various forks were created (Featured + Enhanced + Universal), but even those slowly became abandoned.

Scan Tailor Advanced merged all those enhancements together into one ultimate package + a ton more. There's a big list of features listed on the main Github page:

https://github.com/4lex4/scantailor-advanced

but the largest for me being:

• Multi-threading.
  
  • This makes every stage in the entire process run much faster.
• Better Project Saving
  
  • Allows you to return to a project and remember all your settings + Output.
    
  • In the original Scan Tailor, you had to redo all the steps all over, and generate Output again.
• Much better Page Splitting

So many other little QoL improvements too, like being able to sort images in the Margins step:



Again, the original had no choice. But Advanced includes the original functionality AND more:

• Natural Sort
  
  • Default. (And this was original Scan Tailor.)
• Order by increasing Width
• Order by increasing Height
• Order by decreasing deviation

This becomes invaluable for finding/correcting some of the bad pages.

The vast bulk of pages take up the entire page, but some might only include chapter titles, a single small blockquote, or a few sentences and the chapter would end.

The original Scan Tailor would completely botch those pages during the Margins step, and it would be difficult to even spot which pages were the problem when trying to "Match size with other pages".

Originally Posted by anonlivros

Especially because of the ultra customizable wrap as a 3d grid with dozens of adjustment points, different from the simple 'trapezoidal correction' of the finereader.

Yes, that dewarping by grid is incredible.

When GrannyGrump was working on a digitization of the original Sweeney Todd book:

Rymer, J. M. "The String of Pearls; or, Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"

Here's the original Archive.org PDF:

https://archive.org/details/stringof...e/n13/mode/2up



It had 2 large issues solved by Advanced:

• Left/Right pages were accidentally photographed at different distances.
  
  • So Left text slightly smaller (probably 90%) size of the Right pages.
    
  • I was able to easily find/correct all bad pages by using "sort by width/height" mentioned above.
• Many curved pages
  
  • This became even more noticeable because every page's text actually had a rectangle box drawn around it.
    
  • Luckily, I was able to use Advanced's automatic mode to get me most of the way there, then manual grids to "straighten" based on the rectangle instead.

Finereader only handles that basic "Trapezoidal" problem, if the camera was angled too close to the ground. And the rectangle completely ruined their algorithm to detect wavy text.

Original Scan Tailor didn't have automatic dewarping.

Sadly, I recently cleared up some space and deleted the original source files for that project... or I'd show you more detailed before/afters.