MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - book scanning

kwik · 01-20-2025, 12:09 AM

I recently scanned my first book (Fast Food Nation) with a flatbed scanner using naps2. I scanned at 600dpi. Some pages were not perfectly straight, so it doesn't look professional, though I trimmed each image so no shadow is seen from the curved paper. The images were scanned at 600dpi, greyscale (only the cover was scanned in colour). This took me about a day.

Result
The PDF is searchable thanks to the built-in OCR in naps2. The PDF generated is about 500MB, which is unreasonable. I was able to reduce the rather larage PDF size to around 50MB with a PDF shrinkage app called Densify. Some quality is lost. I am not sure if I am doing things the correct way. I am probably not, right?

Questions
* I would like some tips & tricks to make the job easier / quicker.
* I would like to make an epub instead of PDF. Best way to go about this?
* I would like to be able to extract the OCR text separately instead of only having the OCR'd text searchable in the PDF.

I am looking for any tips & tricks that you might be willing to share to make scanning books easier / quicker / more efficient.

01-20-2025, 12:09 AM	#1
kwik Enthusiast Posts: 30 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2023 Device: Sony PRS-T3	book scanning - best practices? I recently scanned my first book (Fast Food Nation) with a flatbed scanner using naps2. I scanned at 600dpi. Some pages were not perfectly straight, so it doesn't look professional, though I trimmed each image so no shadow is seen from the curved paper. The images were scanned at 600dpi, greyscale (only the cover was scanned in colour). This took me about a day. Result The PDF is searchable thanks to the built-in OCR in naps2. The PDF generated is about 500MB, which is unreasonable. I was able to reduce the rather larage PDF size to around 50MB with a PDF shrinkage app called Densify. Some quality is lost. I am not sure if I am doing things the correct way. I am probably not, right? Questions * I would like some tips & tricks to make the job easier / quicker. * I would like to make an epub instead of PDF. Best way to go about this? * I would like to be able to extract the OCR text separately instead of only having the OCR'd text searchable in the PDF. I am looking for any tips & tricks that you might be willing to share to make scanning books easier / quicker / more efficient.