[bksvol-discuss] Re: scanning

  • From: "Mayrie ReNae" <mayrierenae@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2012 10:11:17 -0700

Hi OpenBook users,
 
Here is another user's ideas of what worked well for her scanning with
OpenBook.
 
See below my signature.
 
I'll also attach the file if you want to save it.
 
Mayrie
 
 

Instructions for Scanning a Book Using OpenBook Scanning and Reading
Software

 

The instructions and suggestions in this document are based on scanning with
OpenBook scanning and reading software version 8.0, and may not be
applicable, in all instances, to prior versions of OpenBook. Though some
settings may differ from earlier versions of OpenBook, the basic guidelines
provide an overview of scanning procedures using this software. The settings
suggested and comments made represent my opinion, based on my experience
with OpenBook software.

 

These instructions assume:

 

that you have your scanner and OpenBook software installed on your computer;

that you have read the users guide for both your specific scanner and
version of OpenBook; and

that you are ready to begin scanning a book for submission to Bookshare.

 

Basic Shortcut Keys (desktop keyboard layout):

 

To have OpenBook read to you, press the key combination INSERT + DOWN ARROW;

To start a scan, press SPACEBAR or F4 (function key 4);

To toggle between Edit Mode and Read-only Mode, press CTRL+E; and

To silence speech temporarily, press CTRL.

 

Note:  All of these functions can be performed by pointing and clicking the
mouse as well as using the computer keyboard. If you are new to OpenBook,
you may want to enable the "announce shortcut and access keys" feature to
help you navigate menus and make changes to settings. This feature is
disabled by default.

 

Enabling "announce shortcut and access keys":

 

 1. Press ALT+G or click on the Settings Menu;

 2. Press G or select General Settings to open the General  Settings
properties page;

 3. Press TAB until you hear, "Announce Shortcut  and Access Keys check
box";

 4. Press the SPACEBAR to check the box;

 5. Tab to "OK" and press ENTER; and 

 6. Be sure to save your settings after making any changes.

 

Adjust Speech Settings Before Starting To Scan:

 

Note:  If you do not wish to have speech enabled, press F5 to toggle between
speech on or off.

 

Choose a reading voice that is easily understandable to you, and adjust the
volume, pitch and rate of speech accordingly;

Adjust speech settings to have OpenBook speak either "most" or "all"
punctuation;

Adjust OpenBook speech settings to speak "bold", "italicized" and
"emphasized" text; and

Adjust the "key echo during editing" settings so that you can monitor
changes made to the scan.

 

Scanning settings

 

Scanning settings may require adjustment with each book scanned. However,
these basic settings may be helpful, and provide a starting point.

 

Note:  If you are attempting to improve a scan or correct optical character
recognition (ocr) problems, it may be wise to change only one setting at a
time.

 

1.    Use "scan and read" mode.

2.    Use "automatic contrast" to begin with, and adjust the contrast if
needed.

3.    Use "automatic page orientation to begin with. Once you know how your
page is oriented on the scanner, switching the "page orientation" to a
specific type such as "normal" or "sideways" will allow for faster page
recognition.

4.    Use a "scan resolution" of 300 dots per inch. When scanning back
covers of books, however, you may achieve better results changing it to 400
dots per inch.

5.    Recognize text using whatever scanning engine works best for you. With
OpenBook 8, each scanning engine provides different results.

6.    Use "normal" as the text type setting.

7.    Set language recognition to "American English".

8.    Set the secondary language to either "none" or American English.
Sometimes you may achieve better results with this set to "none", but there
is no one-size-fits-all answer here.

9.    Use "image format" tiff uncompressed.

10.        Set left, right, top, and bottom inch boundaries to 0.

11.        Uncheck to "recognize columns check box. You may have to check
this box, if your material is in column format.

12.        Uncheck the "color scanning" check box.

13.        Uncheck the "keep exact view" check box.

14.        Check the "two page scanning" check box.

15.        Check the "de-skew" check box.

16.        Uncheck the "de-speckle" check box.

17.        Check the "white-on-black check box, unless you know the print
and paper color are different.

18.        Check the "language analyst" check box.

19.        Uncheck the "discard blank pages" check box. You will need to
know where blank pages occur for the correct page count in the book you are
scanning.

20.        Check the check box to "automatically apply OCR corrections."

21.        The "indicate emphasis emphasis" check box can remain unchecked,
unless you wish to made aware of it.

22.        The "uncertain text" is set by default to be marked with a star.
Personally, I leave this box unchecked.

 

Proofreading using OpenBook software has not been addressed in this
document. For a variety of reasons, I find using Microsoft Word yields much
more consistent results. I have also found that changing OpenBooks' default
setting for saving documents to RTF to be best.

 

Note:  I personally have experienced OpenBook problems when saving scanned
text in large blocks. I recommend saving text in smaller blocks so that you
do not lose an entire scanning project.


  _____  

From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2012 9:47 AM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: scanning


A long time ago someone posted some advice on this list for Open Book users
and I saved it. There have been a number of people who have benefited from
it since and since someone is worrying about Open Book settings again I
suppose it is time to post it again. Here it is:


1. Start with some solid settings in Openbook that will work most of

the time. You may  know your way around Openbook well. I don't know if

you've thought

to work on these settings though since they're not obvious. Under the

settings menu, in the scanner settings tab, make sure that your

despeckle setting is unchecked. In addition, uncheck the option to

scan white text on a black background. These options work well when

scanning newspapers and hardcover books that have a small decoration

around the text. For most books, these settings will actually degrade

performance. In Openbook 7 and later, turn off the language analyst

too. It can introduce OCR errors into your document. Once you have

settings you like, save them as default so you can start scanning

without worrying about them each time you start Openbook.

2. Prepare your book for scanning, and you'll get better results from

the start. Before you begin to scan a book, run your fingers lightly

through the

pages to remove any possible ink ,dust, or other particles that may be

on the pages. If the book is a library book, flip through the book in

sections of

about fifteen pages or so, gently pressing your fingers along the

inner spine to encourage the book to lie flat. If the book belongs to

you, especially

if its a paperback, flip through sections as with a library book, but

bend the book back so that it's outer covers almost touch. You're

giving your book

some flexibility stretches while not breaking its spine. This is

especially important for thick books or when you use two-page scanning

mode and will keep you from having to push down as hard on books while

you scan.

3. Optimize and verify settings for your book. Openbook doesn't have

an optimization feature like Kurzweil, but you can do this yourself

before scanning a whole book. Start with a base of good settings. Use

the resolution setting of 300 DPI for best results. Don't worry about

turning on color scanning unless you're doing a magazine or really

glossy book with lots of photos. Color scanning will just slow you

down if you don't need it. Before scanning a book, open to the center

and do several test scans, adjusting the contrast setting until you

like what you hear. Scanners do have personalities, and they tend to

have a certain contrast setting that works best most of the time. If

you have a high-quality scanner like an Epson, Opticbook, or HP, the

auto contrast feature may work really well for you. In you're using

something like a Canon or Visioneer, you will need to spend more time

adjusting the contrast setting. My old Canon seemed to do best with

the lighten page option. My old HP did best with the darken page

option for most books. Testing 4 or 5 pages in your book will help you

decide which contrast option to use. Once you have figured this out,

please save this as a settings file with the same name as your book.

If you skip this step, you'll have to start over with adjusting

settings when you start Openbook. If you save the settings and only

scan half of your book, you can start Openbook again and load your

settings. Giving them the same name as the book you're scanning will

help you locate the settings file quickly.

4. If someone suggests that you use greyscale, smile politely and

discard the idea. Openbook doesn't implement grey-scale correctly, so

automatic contrast is probably your best choice if a scan isn't coming

out well.

5. Catch bad scans as they happen. There is a friendly debate among

submitters about whether to scan in batches or to scan pages and

recognize them one at a time. There are pros and cons on both sides. I

think this is one area where Openbook makes a submitter's job harder

than it has to be. Since Openbook has no feature to tell you about the

scan quality as you're working, your best bet is to either scan and

proofread as you go or scan 10 to 20 pages at a time and then read

them to make sure your scan is still coming out ok. Nothing is more

frustrating than scanning a 300-page book and discovering that over

half of the pages are a mess. Rescanning is no fun at all!

6. Your scanner needs regular TLC too. Books can be dirty or dusty

sometimes. Mass market paperbacks can leave a residue of ink dust on

your scanner. Keep the scanner glass clean by using a dry, lint-free

cloth. Never use anything wet like an alcohol pad or baby wipe. That

will create little bubbles under the

scanner glass and will cause problems in future scans.

7. When scanning a book in batch mode, do a spot check every 15 or 20

pages. Look at the last page or two of the file to make sure the

settings are still producing accurate results.

8. After doing a scan, run your spellchecker. It will let you see your

spelling errors and will let you fix them more quickly than reading

through the document and fixing errors individually. If

you find some words that Openbook doesn't know, you may want to add

them to your word list so they won't be flagged in future scans. I

don't do this for

proper names unless its a name that will keep cropping up in future

books. I do add words that are valid but that Openbook doesn't have in

its internal

word list. You'll find that doing this over time helps Openbook do a

better job for you when you're cleaning up your scans.

9. Do all of your page rescanning, adding pages, spellchecking,

reading, or editing that you care to do in Openbook. Then save your

file as an rtf. Once you've saved it as an rtf, do not keep editing it

in Openbook because Openbook won't save it properly. So once it's an

rtf file, switch to Word or Wordpad to continue editing or whatever.

To save as an rtf file, press alt f for the file menu, and the letter

a to save as. Tab over to the file type list and choose rtf. Hitting

the letter r in the list should take you right to the rtf option. By

default, Openbook puts files in its library directory. You may want to

navigate to the my documents folder before saving your file. Then tab

over to the save button and press enter.

10. The issue of using auto-corrections when scanning is another issue

where there is debate. I believe it can be a good thing if used

carefully. I should

note that Gerald has pointed out that Openbook has some

auto-corrections that cause problems with books and should be fixed by

users of that program. Here are a few auto-corrections I have added to

my autocorrection list.

dirough for through

diough for though

diought for thought

diey for they

diere for there

dieir for their

cornpany for company

cornfortable for comfortable

tiiing for thing

rnany for many

anydiing for anything

If you use Openbook, you may want to remove a few of the corrections

in its default list. I regularly find these in books scanned in

Openbook and have

to fix them as I read.

modem for modern

torn for tom

glock for clock

morn for mom

bum for burn

corn for com

That last one causes problems for anyone scanning Star Trek books

because Kirk presses his corn badge to talk to the ship. (grin) If a

word like command

is hyphenated between two pages, you get corn-mand. Meanwhile, Batman

dials into the internet with his modern, tries to stop a crook named

torn from shooting him with a clock, and puts the dirty burn in cuffs

until mom-ing. See how auto-corrections can go wrong if you're not

careful?

Whew! We've made it to the end. (grin) I hope some of this makes your


On 7/26/2012 12:39 PM, Lori Castner wrote:


Netta, if you want to write me offlist about the Open Book problem, I may or

may not be able to help.



Loralee.castner@xxxxxxxxxxxxx



Lori C.





-----Original Message-----

From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Dornetta

Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2012 8:54 AM

To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: scanning



Hey Reggie,

I feel as you. I am considering scanning but am still somewhat leery. I

would want to get it right and the scans I do for myself are awful at best. 

I already know that a lot of it has to do with my scan setting for Open Book

and although I am doing the "research" to get corrected there is still the

problem that exist.

As far as Roger's comment about the "hold fors" on the list; as a first time

volunteer I felt like this community was cliquish  when I went on the list

to check out a book. There where so many "hold fors" and I didn't know what

it meant. I have since ditched that impression and decided to work on

whatever I can. I didn't find anything I was interested in proffing at first

and just checked out a book to get started with the proofing process-I have

since ditched that format as well. Now as a volunteer it takes me what I can

only explain as forever because I am always checking and re-reading my

proofs to the point that the times that I do not get on line, my book

expires and with the quickness it gets taken by another volunteer. I said

this to say that honestly the hold fors don't really bother that much since

the books that have hold fors on them are not in my interest anyway. Most of

the books that I am interested in does not seem to be books that someone on

this list will pick up and that is fine and the reason why I am considering

scanning. I only hope to develop a relationship with a proofer that would

like to proof the book for me.

S/N: this stems from a conversation that we have in most of the book club I

am in. All but 2 of us are blind and the blind/v.i. people use book share to

get their reading material. There are not many books in one of the genres we

like to read.

Netta

"Just because you are blind does not mean you lack vision"-Stevie Wonder 



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