The latest on PDF conversion

Latch · 10-11-2011, 01:07 PM

I have an old PDF that I tried to convert to epub using Calibre. A 20 MB PDF turned into a 70MB epub. I'm guessing Calibre created a bitmap for every page instead of doing any OCR work. Can anyone recommend a good PDC->epub converter?

Benjamin Buford · 10-11-2011, 02:15 PM

A week ago I converted a 400-pages book from PDF to EPUB by using ABBYY FineReader 11 Professional. The PDF was all images (a scanned book).

One of FineReader's export formats is EPUB, which I used. I think this is a new feature in FineReader 11.

But (and there is always a but) there was a lot of manual work involved.
First, I had to spend a couple of hours to go over the whole book to revise all the places where FineReader was unsure in terms of OCR. I found FineReader to be really comfortable and fast to work with. You can always interrrupt your revision and continue later.
Second, I spent two or three days editing the EPUB in Sigil, correcting paragraphs and line breaks which should have been hyphens, and the way images appear, and of course all of that formatting stuff so that it looks nice.

But now I can say I really have a perfect EPUB copy of that book. It's a lot of work, but worth it.

Don't try ABBYY PDF Transformer, I tried it and found that software to be crap. No comparison to FineReader in terms of speed, ease of use, revising options, accuracy and export formats.

Edit: And oh, 96 MB (PDF) were shrunk to 13.3 MB (EPUB), where 13 MB are eaten up by 41 rather big PNG images including the cover.

Latch · 10-11-2011, 04:11 PM

Thanks. I'll look into it.

10-11-2011, 01:07 PM	#1
Latch Porcupine Tree fan Posts: 139 Karma: 357322 Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Ottawa, Canada Device: Kobo Touch	The latest on PDF conversion I have an old PDF that I tried to convert to epub using Calibre. A 20 MB PDF turned into a 70MB epub. I'm guessing Calibre created a bitmap for every page instead of doing any OCR work. Can anyone recommend a good PDC->epub converter?

10-11-2011, 02:15 PM	#2
Benjamin Buford Nameless Being	A week ago I converted a 400-pages book from PDF to EPUB by using ABBYY FineReader 11 Professional. The PDF was all images (a scanned book). One of FineReader's export formats is EPUB, which I used. I think this is a new feature in FineReader 11. But (and there is always a but) there was a lot of manual work involved. First, I had to spend a couple of hours to go over the whole book to revise all the places where FineReader was unsure in terms of OCR. I found FineReader to be really comfortable and fast to work with. You can always interrrupt your revision and continue later. Second, I spent two or three days editing the EPUB in Sigil, correcting paragraphs and line breaks which should have been hyphens, and the way images appear, and of course all of that formatting stuff so that it looks nice. But now I can say I really have a perfect EPUB copy of that book. It's a lot of work, but worth it. Don't try ABBYY PDF Transformer, I tried it and found that software to be crap. No comparison to FineReader in terms of speed, ease of use, revising options, accuracy and export formats. Edit: And oh, 96 MB (PDF) were shrunk to 13.3 MB (EPUB), where 13 MB are eaten up by 41 rather big PNG images including the cover. Last edited by Benjamin Buford; 10-11-2011 at 02:23 PM.

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10-11-2011, 04:11 PM	#3
Latch Porcupine Tree fan Posts: 139 Karma: 357322 Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Ottawa, Canada Device: Kobo Touch	Thanks. I'll look into it.

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