Scanned PDF on Kindle Paperwhite

[nicolausYes]

I've got many technical literature in PDF (or djvu). It is scanned documents, not eBook.

I have Pocketbook 602. Not so contrast screen, no built-in light and not comfortable using of dictionaries forced me to own Kindle Paperwhite.

I uploaded my pdfs to Kindle and was horrified how NOT smoothed are fonts look.

Maybe photo is not with a good quality, but it looks like this.

Pocketbook vs KPW:
[Image violates guidelines for size - MODERATOR]

References to full-size photots:
Pocketbook – http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7432/9...6e75230b_o.jpg
Kindle – http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5466/9...66fff653_o.jpg


So here are some questions.
Is anyone have the same problems?
Can I force Kindle to smooth fonts somehow (little hope)?
Can I smooth fonts on desktop somehow?

[hawhill]

JPEG isn't a good format to make your point, but I see what you mean. My suggestion would be to give k2pdfopt on the desktop a try (or jailbreak and use KoReader, if you don't mind the hassle). It will reflow your scanned PDF and make this tiny font much more readable.

There's nothing you could tune to make the default viewer display a better picture, I think.

[tompatzek]

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http://www.pageballs.com/externe-fes...rlaessig-daten
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Ich wünsche dir viel Spaß bei der Such nach einem geeigneten externe Festplatten Test!

[nicolausYes]

Here is the same problem

hawhill, I was trying k2pdfopt, but the output was unreadable, because the formatting was completely broken.

Thanks, maybe will install jail and use KoReader. Can I use it only as pdf-viewer?

[crich70]

They are having another promotion for a free copy of the Retail version of the program.
PDF to Epub

[hawhill]

Not sure how that would work for bitmap scan PDFs. k2pdfopt can be parametrized, but KoReader won't help anyway (it's using k2pdfopt internally, so the result is the same). Well, that said: KoReader _does_ have a gamma setting that would allow for *some* adaption. If you use it using a launcher like KUAL you can use it for PDFs only, it has its own file selector (though still a bit rough around the edges). I guess Duokan might also have a gamma setting, but I'm not sure, didn't use Duokan in a long time now. Both options are certainly advanced stuff. Out of the box, I guess mangling the PDF on your PC with software is the only option.

[Zistmo]

I have a Kindle Paperwhite and a big collection of scanned pdfs. My experience is bad most in most of the cases and I would never recommend the Paperwhite to someone that wants to use scanned pdf files.

What is really *annoying* is that I did not have this problem in my kindle keyboard and I have recently seen that the Kindle 4 deals ok with scanned pdfs as well.

When I contacted Amazon, their answer was vague and not very helpful, kind of someone tells you that they take note and will report your problem to someone that, at the same time, will have to pass it to another guy... so forget about it. Last updates of the firmware did not solve the problem and I lost all my faith in them months ago...

Any reflowing app is not even a suggestion here, unless the pdf has been thoroughly reviewed trhough a good OCR software, which is usually not the case.

Another problem that I have found recently is scanned pdfs with missing letters when they are opened in the Paperwhite (see attached file below).

My hypothesis is that the increased resolution in the Paperwhite makes it harder for the processor/memory to render and display scanned pdfs properly. That would explain as well the problems with the "low memory" message that
is unfortunately frequent to many users that want to read pdf files in the Paperwhite.

My suggestion: get a Kindle 4 or an iPad.

Contrary to the opinion to many people the Kindle —or any other ereader— could be more than decent displaying pdf files. The lack of commitment of Amazon and other companies for this format is a shameful consequence of incompetence and a narrow commercial strategy focused on selling ebooks rather than making decent machines.

E-readers are cheap toys created mostly with the intention of selling bestsellers... junk-novels or popular science books that people read in the public transport and that can be easily forgotten when finished... not for serious readers that want to work with annotations in a more advanced level, or that want to organise their libraries with multiple folders or tags, or use pdfs or other formats, or browse quick and seamlesly from one section to other inside a book, or enjoying a minimum level of usability etc.

That's why in my opinion Amazon will fall far behind Apple when the iPad mini with retina display reaches the shops. OK that the e-ink display is nicer for reading... but the disadvantages of the Kindle are many and quite annoying.

[Ups, sorry for such a long post...]

[hawhill]

That's two different markets that are mostly separate. Except maybe for the occasional errorneous purchase.

I agree with your suggestion, at least partly. Even the K4 is probably not a good device to read PDFs. The iPad, of course, is. As is the Kindle Fire HD. Not sure about the non-HD versions, but the valid comparison is iPad vs Fire, not iPad vs e-ink device. The latter is comparing a motorbike to a bicycle. Yes, it is faster.

Probably I should not start discussing this, but I strongly disagree with the ranting. E-readers are as cheap toys as are tablets (yes, even the shiny polished ones). They have a certain focus, that's right. And of course, yes, bestsellers are read on them.

That stance toward "seriousness" of reading, quality of the user interface - I'll ignore that for the better of the discussion.

A last point about reflowing a PDF: You're a bit wrong on that, as e.g. k2pdfopt is a reflower that is based on optical heuristics and will reflow the PDF on a bitmap basis. No OCR step needed in that case. Whether you're happy with the outcome I don't know - you do not seem to have tried it yet.

As for your technical hypothesis why PDF is worse on Paperwhite - I tend to see it unfounded. A general argument against it is the KDX, which has K3 equivalent PDF rendering without major problems. It's probably simply the handling of alpha channels and grey levels in the PDF rendering engine of the KPW. As for missing letters - in most cases the PDFs are faulty. PDF is a complex format and I've seen horribly generated ones. It often manifests in things like missing letters or "moved" letters. Encoding errors, broken included fonts - all that stuff.

[Zistmo]

Originally Posted by hawhill

A last point about reflowing a PDF: You're a bit wrong on that, as e.g. k2pdfopt is a reflower that is based on optical heuristics and will reflow the PDF on a bitmap basis. No OCR step needed in that case.

Yes, I was not a bit, but completely wrong. I am sorry —and slightly embarrashed— for my uninformed opinion. I am just going to give it a try right now.

I should have remarked as well that my hypothesis about the problems of the Kindle Paperwhite dealing with PDF's is not based on any deep technical knowledge and, therefore, probably was not worth to have been posted here. I understand that if the problem is as "simple" as you suggest it should/could have been easily solved with a firmware update... And that is sad that it wasn't.

I concede as well that the tone of my message was ranty. I am a frustrated user that strongly disagrees with the idea that PDF files have to be read in tablets and not on e-readers. "Serious" was probably not the best word when what I had in mind was "professional readers" (i.e. academics) people that spend a big amount of time reading and working on what they read, and that feel that their needs are not taken in consideration, probably because they are not enough in number to be profitable, and definitely not because of the technical limitations of the hardware.

So, I think it is a pity that you ignored you ignored that part of my post, because was probably the only *serious* one... Anyway, sorry if it was a bit off-topic here...

[Notjohn]

As a rule, PDFs are a very poor input for Kindle publication (or personal reading, in this case). And the Paperwhite, of all Kindle devices, seems to have the most one-off oddities, for example with displaying courier/monospace font. We are forever devising workarounds so that our books look okay on the Paperwhite. No other single device or app goes off by itself as the Paperwhite does.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Zistmo

I have a Kindle Paperwhite and a big collection of scanned pdfs. My experience is bad most in most of the cases and I would never recommend the Paperwhite to someone that wants to use scanned pdf files.

Just an observation: K4 and prior used Adobe RMSDK to render PDF. Kindle Touch and Paperwhite do not (maybe it is some PDF library from FoxIt which Amazon has a stake in). So there are going to be a lot of differences. For my PDF requirements, Touch and Paperwhite have much better PDF support (for example, PDF bookmark and hyperlink support).

Scanned PDFs are a headache, chew up a lot of storage, and are not accessible (no text search etc) so I would OCR them at the least if I wanted to put them on my Kindle.

Also I find that increasing the contrast a notch can make text more readable most of the time. That's an option for K3 and later I believe.

[Markismus]

@Zistmo I agree that Eink and scanned pdf equals philosophic reading .

As a Kobo Aura HD user I am starting to be quite happy with reading scanned pdf's in koreader.
There are some shortcomings (dictionary and notes are not really working perfectly.) And seeing your picture in #7 I do wonder whether setting the text to "darkest" or high quality with reflow will give a good result. Question is whether you should blame the reader (device/koreader)?

Blame the scan. I do. I use Scantailor to make the texts really black&white again. (I can't find the beta-version I am using anymore online, so I put it here.) (This answers the question in post #1: Can I smooth the fonts on the desktop, too.)

I use it before I OCR with Finereader, forcing it to leave my pages unaltered. Version 11 allows you to save to epub directly. Although a non-linear type page with greek and schemes gets hopelessly jumbled. So I mainly save to pdf files with exact image with text underneath. Adding bookmarks in Acrobat results in a competitor for the real book! Only real problem for the digital copy is that I can't write in the margins.

[Argoniton]

Hi everyone I've just solved this problem, merely by using additional option in Acrobat Text Recognition called ClearScan (Tools->Text Recognition-> In this File->Edit-> Clear Scan)

Note: Amazon e-book intentionally reduces quality in scanned pdfs (i.e. images of real pages) beginning from 4 gen, thus you should omit using pictures in pdf. And that acrobat tool successfully deals with.

Questions? temko97<.at/>gmail.com.

[amiroo]

Thanks Argonitin. you solved a big problem no one answered me. I appreciate that

[Tenzin_la]

You may want to see if a website that uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to convert the PDF into a Word doc or something would work. The few times I've needed, I've used http://smallpdf.com/