Can Fine Reader scan in Gray scale. I find scanning with that when there's
probs like the one you describe, helps a lot. Also, Fine Reader though
very customizable, smetimes causes problems because it is so
cusomizable. It almost takes a sighted person to make it work,. That's
why if you have the money or the demo, k1k or Openbook (shudder) might do
the trick for you.
Ner At 08:35 AM 5/2/2004, you wrote:
Hello all.
So here I was thinking that I had a free weekend, no work, it's raining outside, the vet ordered restricted walking for my dog to help a sprained shoulder heal, and I have a pile of books. What more could a person want? Well, okay, let's not go there. <smile>
It seems, though, that my pile of books contain some real scanning ogres. I'm wondering if there are any tricks I can employ to make the scans better. Understand that given your basic novel, such as the Alice Walker novel I submitted Saturday morning, I can usually get a nearly flawless scan the first time through with the settings I typically use.
One of my problem child books is one that contains many quoted passages from other experts in the field. In these quotations, (and there are a lot of them), the scan turns all f's into j's, so that I consistently get words like oj, jor, jorm, jrom, jundamental, and jurther more. So okay, find and replace knocked these back to a manageable handful. Then I notice in the same book that whole passages are illegible. I'm not sure of the cause, but am guessing that some funky font is being used as other parts of the book that are straight text from the author come out great. The book is good quality paper, kind of thick and slick, and I've rescanned pages that are troublesome with no improved results. I increased the resolution which slowed the scan and helped a little, but not much. I worked for hours on this book yesterday and still don't have a version that I'm comfortable submitting. I don't like to submit anything that I'd have trouble reading myself.
Then I have several books that are meant to be thought provoking...short passages on each page, sometimes with additional comments from the author. These are the kind of books that are meant to be picked up periodically for inspiration, not read all the way through ...little pocket books on various topics. I've started scanning two or three of these, and what a mess! Again, I'm assuming that funky fonts are used to make it look interesting visually. FineReader has some font selections under scanning options, but there are a lot of them. Any suggestions on how to guess about which ones to change to? There are three boxes for identifying fonts and each one has about 30 selections.
Who would have thought these little books could be so much trouble! Give me a 600 page novel any day! <smile>
Peace and Hope,
Donna, the frustrated scanner
Noel Romey Arkansas, USA View my insights at my live journal: http://djner.livejournal.com
