gscan2pdf (maybe linux only)

[eksor]

Hi:

http://gscan2pdf.sourceforge.net/

It is a gui to several cmd line utilities, including scanning tools.
BUT the wonderful thing is that you van import a scanned pdf and clean it through unpaper (http://unpaper.berlios.de/). So you will be able to automagically:

-Clean dark/gray areas
-Remove isolated dark spots
-Correct unaligned lines
-Dither

You can also split a double column document or crop a document, the whole document or page by page.

The processing can be done sequentially i.e. first split then crop then clean.

After processing you can save it in several formarts, pdf, djvu or individual images of the pages.

The interface can be confusing at first but with a bit of practice it is pretty straightforward..

Regards.

[frabjous]

Thanks for the info. I've actually been meaning to try this.

Browsing through the Ubuntu Software Center yesterday, I noticed Scan Tailor, which appears to be a program similar to unpaper, except that it has a GUI.

I've never tried it, so I can't vouch for it. Anyone try it?

[eksor]

Originally Posted by frabjous

Thanks for the info. I've actually been meaning to try this.

Browsing through the Ubuntu Software Center yesterday, I noticed Scan Tailor, which appears to be a program similar to unpaper, except that it has a GUI.

I've never tried it, so I can't vouch for it. Anyone try it?

Very nice find, excellent!

I'll try to try :-) it, for sure.

Thank you very much!

[eksor]

Originally Posted by eksor

Very nice find, excellent!

I'll try to try :-) it, for sure.

Thank you very much!

I have tested this soft (scan taylor), windoze version in a virtual machine with xp sp3

PROS

1) Perfect automatic deskewing, amazing
2) Quite good automatic content selection, draws a bounding box around text & graphics in a page
3) Crisp text rendering even with hig levels of zooming, despeckle ok.
4) Allows for repositioning of selected contents, centered, left,...
5) Easy to use

CONS

1) Non parametrizable at all
2) Lacks of a cleaning feature
3) No pdf/djvu output, just individual tiff of pages
4) Works well with text with graphics (for instance, technnical papers), tested with a comic was a failure, some automatic feature cropped parts of the pages.

NOTES

Splitting feature not tested

Regards.

PD: I like your signature very much! I use Kile instead of texcenter and Scientific Linux instead of Ububntu (this is gonna change soon)

[frabjous]

Thanks for the testing, eksor. That's a very useful report.

I think I'm just about ready to kill my Windows partition entirely -- which I mainly use for Acrobat Pro, to do things like this. Handling the .tiff to .pdf/.djvu part of it shouldn't be too tricky with other tools.

I used to use Kile -- actually, at times I miss it -- but having useful forward/inverse search with PDFs rather than DVIs reach makes TeXworks wortwhile. I also didn't like having installing half of KDE just to use Kile.

I also have my eye on Gummi, which is a linux LaTeX editor with live-updating preview.

[eksor]

Originally Posted by eksor

I have tested this soft (scan taylor), windoze version in a virtual machine with xp sp3

PROS

1) Perfect automatic deskewing, amazing
2) Quite good automatic content selection, draws a bounding box around text & graphics in a page
3) Crisp text rendering even with hig levels of zooming, despeckle ok.
4) Allows for repositioning of selected contents, centered, left,...
5) Easy to use

CONS

1) Non parametrizable at all
2) Lacks of a cleaning feature
3) No pdf/djvu output, just individual tiff of pages
4) Works well with text with graphics (for instance, technnical papers), tested with a comic was a failure, some automatic feature cropped parts of the pages.

NOTES

Splitting feature not tested

Regards.

PD: I like your signature very much! I use Kile instead of texcenter and Scientific Linux instead of Ububntu (this is gonna change soon)

Update / correction

With comics manual modes work much better, the annoying effect was due to automatic content selection. Turn it to manual and modify the bounding box by yourself.

Regards