MobileRead Forums - View Single Post

readingaloud · 02-21-2007, 08:04 AM

I'm in about the same place, having received my SnapScan500M (the Mac version) on Monday, and being part of the way through creating my third book.

Here's my workflow:

1. take the book apart with a box cutter. I cut it into chunks of about 50 leaves (that is, about 100 numbered pages). (5 minutes.)

2. trim the glued part of the chunk off. I use a mat-cutter, which is not the right tool for the job, but I just happen to have one, and it works fine. (2 minutes.)

3. scan the pages, in batches of about 25 leaves. (Yes, it is a good idea to get the settings right--I scan direct to PDF, black and white, auto de-skew, auto blank page deletion, one level lighter than the middle setting). (about a minute per batch, and fun to watch--the scanner seems to just inhale the books) So far I've had only one mis-feed.

4. Open all of the files together in OmniPage, and recognize them. (I don't know how long this takes because I go do something else for a while, but it's a long time--more than an hour).

5. Use the editing enviroment in OmniPage to review the file. I only do the review of the possible errors that OmniPage flags, and even of those there are some errors I don't correct because I know I can get them more easily later. (About an hour, depending on how difficult the OCRing was.)

6. Save the file plain text, and then place it into an InDesign document. Here's where, with the aid of reasonably good search and replace functionality, I fix most of the remaining errors. Some problems have to be looked at one by one--for example, I set the find/change function to replace hyphens with em-dashes, but have to look at each one to see whether it needs to be replaced or not. This is an example of something I don't bother doing in Omni-Page--I don't replace hyphens with em-dashes then because I know that I'll do it more quickly in InDesign. (This takes a couple of hours--you could spend more time getting things perfect, or a good deal less if you didn't bother with anything that you have to do case by case). This is also when I make real footnotes, and generally make the book look the way I want it to look.

7. Create a PDF and move it to my waiting iLiad. (1 minute)

8. Read the book. Feel smug. Notice errors I should have corrected. Feel less smug. (time varies.)

02-21-2007, 08:04 AM	#6
readingaloud Enthusiast Posts: 34 Karma: 55 Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Switzerland Device: iRex iLiad; Sony Reader; Amazon Kindle	I'm in about the same place, having received my SnapScan500M (the Mac version) on Monday, and being part of the way through creating my third book. Here's my workflow: 1. take the book apart with a box cutter. I cut it into chunks of about 50 leaves (that is, about 100 numbered pages). (5 minutes.) 2. trim the glued part of the chunk off. I use a mat-cutter, which is not the right tool for the job, but I just happen to have one, and it works fine. (2 minutes.) 3. scan the pages, in batches of about 25 leaves. (Yes, it is a good idea to get the settings right--I scan direct to PDF, black and white, auto de-skew, auto blank page deletion, one level lighter than the middle setting). (about a minute per batch, and fun to watch--the scanner seems to just inhale the books) So far I've had only one mis-feed. 4. Open all of the files together in OmniPage, and recognize them. (I don't know how long this takes because I go do something else for a while, but it's a long time--more than an hour). 5. Use the editing enviroment in OmniPage to review the file. I only do the review of the possible errors that OmniPage flags, and even of those there are some errors I don't correct because I know I can get them more easily later. (About an hour, depending on how difficult the OCRing was.) 6. Save the file plain text, and then place it into an InDesign document. Here's where, with the aid of reasonably good search and replace functionality, I fix most of the remaining errors. Some problems have to be looked at one by one--for example, I set the find/change function to replace hyphens with em-dashes, but have to look at each one to see whether it needs to be replaced or not. This is an example of something I don't bother doing in Omni-Page--I don't replace hyphens with em-dashes then because I know that I'll do it more quickly in InDesign. (This takes a couple of hours--you could spend more time getting things perfect, or a good deal less if you didn't bother with anything that you have to do case by case). This is also when I make real footnotes, and generally make the book look the way I want it to look. 7. Create a PDF and move it to my waiting iLiad. (1 minute) 8. Read the book. Feel smug. Notice errors I should have corrected. Feel less smug. (time varies.)