Computer scanner help requested..

   / Computer scanner help requested.. #1  

thatguy

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I am trying to scan a manual that we created at work in excel and word so it can be converted and combined into one PDF file later on.

A couple questions..

1) The scanner puts them in TIFF files, which are huge.. I can convert them to just about any file type using an image program (GraphicConverter on an older Mac w/ OS 9.x). Should I leave them as TIFF or convert them to something else?

2) What is a good DPI for scanning words AND screen shots/prints?

thanks

Brian
 
   / Computer scanner help requested.. #2  
I have a program on my computer that came with my flatbed scanner. It's called ScanSoft OmniPage SE 2.0. It is a word recoginition program. Here's a breif description from the programs help section. I have used it many times to copy pages out of books and magazines or typed pages and converted them into editable text. It's a great program and might be the easiest way to do what your looking to do. It's made by --- Nuance - The Leading Supplier of Speech Recognition, Imaging, PDF and OCR Solutions

"What is OCR?
Optical character recognition (OCR) is the process of extracting text from an image of a page. This page image is an electronic picture of text and maybe other elements such as headings and pictures. Page images can result from scanning a paper document or from opening an electronic image file. You may receive these files by e-mail or from a fax machine or from your own scanner.

These images do not have editable text characters; they have many tiny dots (pixels) that together form a picture of text. The OCR process examines the text image and creates computer-editable text from it, so you do not have to retype the text manually.

OCR takes image: and creates text:

During OCR, OmniPage SE uses the settings selected in the OmniPage Toolbox to determine the text flow on a page, and creates ordered zones around areas of a page to identify what will be recognized as text or retained as a graphic. After OCR, you can save the resulting text to a variety of word-processing, page layout, and spreadsheet applications.

OmniPage SE's OCR Capabilities
In addition to text recognition, OmniPage SE can retain the following elements of a document during OCR.

Graphics
Photos, logos, and drawings are examples of graphics.

Text formatting
Font types, font sizes, and font styles (such as bold or italic) are examples of text character formatting. Spacing between paragraphs, indents, tabs, line spacing and alignment and examples of paragraph formatting.

Page formatting
Column structure, paragraph placement, table handling, and locations of graphics are examples of page formatting.

Text Editor views
Recognition results are placed in the Text Editor. This offers three views and allows you to define how much formatting you want to have displayed.

OmniPage SE only recognizes machine-printed characters such as laser-printed or typewritten text. However, it can retain handwritten text, such as a signature, as a graphic."
 
   / Computer scanner help requested.. #3  
200 dpi would be the minimum I would use.. that's about fax quality. The higher res you go.. the better quality you get.. there will be a point of diminishing returns though.. also.. don't get into extended dpi that some scanners offer past their native dpi.. IE.. if your scanner is 600 dpi but can 'extend - fake' 1200.. stay at 600. Also.. the more dpi.. the bigger the pic size.

Soundguy
 
   / Computer scanner help requested.. #4  
What you are trying to do is very frustrating and unless you can keep all of the scans in one file nearly impossible you will not have a usable product. Office has a built in scanner program but it will reformat anything that is not simple text and look all funny. If you do not have a good scanner program designed to do this it would be much better , faster and far less frustrating to just take it to somplace like mail boxes ect or UPS store and have them do it for you. But in some cases they may refuse if it is copywrited material.
 
   / Computer scanner help requested.. #5  
If you convert the tiff files to jpeg, they'll be smaller. Tiff is usually used for printing to high end documents with millions of colours such as photographs. Jpeg is mostly what I use for colour illustrations and photographs that are to be viewed on screen rather than printed. If your document is black and white, you could even get away with converting the tiff files to bitmap.

300 dpi is a good enough scan density to be viewed on screen but will look a little pixelated if you print it. However, colour scans above 300 dpi tend to get really bloated so your final pdf file would be pretty big if you scan above this resolution.

If you have access to it on computer, can't you output a pdf version of the Word/Xcel manual you want to include in your pdf document? It would be easier than scanning a paper version and mean your final pdf document is a much smaller file.
 
   / Computer scanner help requested..
  • Thread Starter
#6  
Thanks for the help.. I was hoping not to go the OCR route since i dont need to change anything and that could be an extra step. I just need to scan a printed document into a manageable file to be converted to PDF..

I tried GIF, but the quality dropped off.. I may try jpeg.. the TIFF files were almost 450kb.. I may take the suggestion and have someone do it for me as well. we have a print shop at work that would do it, but they were backed up and I needed it sooner..

thanks

Brian
 
   / Computer scanner help requested.. #7  
If you or know somebody that has the professional version of acrobat you can combine excel and word files to make one pdf and not scan anything. I have the pro version and could do it for you. PM me and I can give you my email so you could email me the files.
 
   / Computer scanner help requested.. #8  
Like Dallas said. Also you can print to your Hard Drive via PDF, which makes it a PDF instantly. Then you can either combine all your PDF's into one file or keep them separate.
 
   / Computer scanner help requested.. #9  
Dallas_Lilly said:
If you or know somebody that has the professional version of acrobat you can combine excel and word files to make one pdf and not scan anything. I have the pro version and could do it for you. PM me and I can give you my email so you could email me the files.

You don't need Acrobat. All you need is - pdf 995: create PDF documents easily for free

It's free and creates pdf files from any application, as it installs as a printer. I've been using it a long time, and it works great. They also offer the capability to combine pdf's into a single file, and digitally encrypt the files - all for free. The output is clean, with no watermarks or footnotes added like some other free pdf generators.
 
   / Computer scanner help requested.. #10  
Dallas_Lilly said:
If you or know somebody that has the professional version of acrobat you can combine excel and word files to make one pdf and not scan anything. I have the pro version and could do it for you. PM me and I can give you my email so you could email me the files.


I was thinking the same thing... I don't have the Pro version, but I have the one that lets me create and edit PDF's from existing files. My only fear would be not getting the two files combined right for you..... I'd shoot the files to Dallas... he'll get it taken care of I am sure. Should be pretty easy.
 
 
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