Hi, Patti. If you've been adjusting your Openbook settings, it sounds like you've been doing a lot of troubleshooting already and getting some frustrating results. In your place, I'd probably feel like tossing the scanner out the window sometimes. (smile) From what I understand, my dad was able to get my Visioneer 7300 scanner at Office Depot for $49. I didn't ask him since it was a gift. I did see it advertised in their monthly flyer though, and I know that's where he got my scanner. Anyhow, when I use Openbook to scan books, I go to the scanning settings and turn off despeckle, turn off the setting for scanning light text on a dark background, and I turn off a setting called language analyst. I keep these settings turned off by default, and I saved them as part of my default settings. I scan a lot of paperbacks. With my scanner, I get the best results by setting my contrast setting to normal or to lighten page. What I do is go to a page in the middle of a book and scan it with either of those contrast settings to see what might work best with the particular book. I use a page toward the middle of the book because title pages and copyright notices tend to be in a different kind of print than the actual content of the book.
I mostly scan with Kurzweil now, but I have Openbook installed and still use it sometimes to validate books in ark format and keep myself familiar with it in case people on the list need help with using the program. I do have a preference for Kurzweil, and yet I do see several of our volunteers producing very nice work with Openbook and know that my scans improved markedly while I was using Openbook as my only scanning program. I hope something I've written here will help you. I know you have books you want to read, and I'd love to see you able to do that.
Monica Willyard Patti Johnson wrote:
Hi Monica, all this is really interesting. I know the one touch 8100 is no longer around, and since it is much older, then [perhaps that is a problem. I have tried changing OB's settings numerous times, and am still not really impressed with the results, but if you can tell me your exact settings I can try it.
