Reposting for Jana...hope this helps, its what showed up in my archive ----- Original Message ----- From: "Donna Smith" <donnafsmith@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 9:57 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Scanning with FineReader, long > Hi all, and a very happy new year! I was out of pocket yet again, having > house guests for a week and then there was all that holiday cheer to share, > but I have mostly caught up with messages and am ready to present > scanning with FineReader 101. Excuse me just a minute while I don my > Mistress of FineReader gear. Ah yes, spike-heeled boots in place...now > where did I put that whip?? <grin> > > My standard disclaimer: I am not now, nor have I ever been, a software > developer, a technology specialist, or a student in any formal sense of > computers. So to all you computer geeks out there, and you know who you > are, don't get excited when I use lay terms to discuss something instead of > geek lingo. Don't make me have to find my whip! > > As with other scanning software, it's all in the options and how you set > them. What I describe below are my typical settings for scanning in > two-page mode, regular print, straight text, with the book fitting nicely on > the scanner bed. Any setting can be changed or tweaked to produce slightly > different results, but this is the base from which I usually start. > > Open FineReader and go to the tools menu by pressing alt for menus and then > T for tools. This will probably put you on the spell-check selection. > Press O for options and you will find yourself in a dialogue box with six > groups of settings to muck around with. These six groups are: 1. general > page; 2. view page; 3. scan open image page; 4. recognition page; 5. check > spelling page; and 6. formatting page. Now the fun begins. > > In each group of settings above, you have choices to make, check boxes to > check or uncheck, a myriad of little things that will fine tune the scan you > get, and when you learn what they all can do for you, you will find that > your life as a scanner and the lives of all of our validator friends will > suddenly become much better. I urge you to really explore all of these > options on numerous occasions until they begin to make sense and you begin > to understand their purpose. There's nothing that can be done in this > dialogue box that can't be undone. The worst thing that will happen is that > you get a really lousy scan because you chose the wrong combination of > settings for that particular book. The best thing that can happen is that > you learn your software and produce really excellent scans. > > So now I'll go through each group of settings one at a time, giving the > settings I use for the typical scan mentioned above. Under each group, I'll > list the options available and then the settings that I use. > > 1. General page: > A. Interface language, English > B. Show image during scanning, check box checked > C. Show tips during recognition, check box not checked > D. Open last batch at start-up, check box checked > E. Adjust image to fit printable area while printing, not checked > F. Show welcome dialogue at start-up, not checked > G. Enable ABBYY community news channel, not checked > H. Save button > I. Load button > J. Use defaults button > K. Close button. > (Note: For now, we'll do nothing with H through K.) > > 2. View Page > A. Appearance item, Uncertain character > B. None button. > C. Block frames width, 1 > D. Show black and white images in image window, not checked > E. Show black and white images in zoom window, not checked > F. Show zoom windows scroll bars, checked > G. Show scale black and white images as gray, checked > H. Highlight uncertain characters, checked > I. Show nonprinted characters in window, not checked > J. Switch to full page mode, checked. > K. Drafter editor font size, 12 > L. Close button. > > 3. Scan Open Image Page > A. Scanner twain driver, Epson Twain 5 (of course needs to be set for your > scanner) > B. Use FineReader interface, checked, (very important) > C. Display options dialogue before scanning, not checked > D. Scanner settings button (pressing enter here will open yet another > dialogue box, but one that is pretty important. So press enter and here are > my settings) > I. Image orientation, landscape > II. Measure units, inches > III. Paper size, letter > IV. Brightness automatic, checked > V. Pictures scanning mode, black and white pictures > VI. Resolution, 300 > VII. Pause between pages, checked (and for some reason, this has to be > checked every time you scan no matter how you save the settings.) > VIII. Edit box for seconds to pause, 5 > IX. Show this dialogue box before scanning, not checked > X. Okay button > XI. Cancel button > (Note; pressing okay after setting your options will return you to the > original dialogue box and back to the D. option of scanner settings button. > So now we'll resume going through the third group of options under scan open > image page.) > E. Invert image, not checked > F. Despeckle image, not checked > G. Split dual pages, checked (very important) > H. Detect image orientation during scanning, checked > I. Convert color and gray images to black and white, not checked > J. Ask for page number before adding page to batch, not checked > K. Open image during scanning, checked > L. Close button. > > 4. Recognition Page > A. Recognition language, English > B. Edit languages > C. Auto detect layout, checked > D. Clear background noise, checked > E. Look for bar codes, not checked > F. Auto detect, checked > G. One line of text per cell, not checked > H. No merged cells in table, not checked > I. Do not use user patterns, checked > J. Pattern editor button > K. Close button > > 5. Check Spelling Page > A. Stop at words with uncertain characters, checked > B. Stop at words not found in dictionary, checked > C. Stop at compound words, not checked > D. Ignore words with digits and other non-alphabetic characters, checked > E. Skip prompting for word forms (English dictionary only), checked > F. Correct spaces before and after punctuation marks, checked > G. Error display level set before recognition, standard > H. View dictionaries button > I. Browse button > J. Close button > > 6. Formatting Page > A. Retain font and font size, checked > B. Keep pictures, not checked > C. Serif, Times New Roman > D. Sans seriff, Arial > E. Monospaced, Courier New > F. Format settings button, (this is another important one, so press enter > and here's what you get) > I. RTF docs word xml tab > II. Default paper size, letter > III. Automaticly increase paper size, checked > IV. Keep page breaks, checked, (super-mega important) > V. Keep line breaks, not checked (also pretty darn significant) > VI. Retain text color, not checked > VII. Remove optional hyphens, checked (another major time-saver) > > VIII. Enable FineReader zoom Window in Microsoft Word 2003 only for word > xml format, not checked > IX. With text color, not checked > X. With background color, not checked > XI. Save in Word 97 or later format, checked > XII. JPEG, checked > XIII. JPEG quality, 50 > XIV. Reduce picture resolution to, 150 > XV. Okay button > XVI. Cancel button > (Note: after making selections, press OK and you will be returned to the > regularly scheduled program which was the formatting page.) > G. Close button > > At this point, use control-tab to take you back to the general page where we > started this odyssey. Tab over until you get to save. Press enter and name > this settings file, preferably something that will make sense when you try > to remember it later. Then tab over to the nearest close button and press > enter. You will now be ready to scan, or you can close out FineReader and > return later with the settings saved. > > When you open FineReader again and are ready to scan a book in two-page mode > with no extra frills, press alt, T and O to get back to the options under > the tools menu, control-tab until you land on general page, tab over to the > load button, press enter and type in the name of the settings file you > created, and press enter. You will then need to control tab to the scan > open image page, tab to the scanner settings button, press enter, tab over > and check pause between pages and tab again to set the number of seconds to > 5. Tab to close and press enter, tab to close again and press enter, and > then you're ready to scan. > > Taken all at once like this it might appear a lot to do, but it's really not > once you get the settings in place. I've created similar settings for > one-page scanning for that occasional book that is too large for two-page > mode, and another one for retaining line breaks for the occasional book of > poetry or some other text where saving the line breaks might be important. > But the one I use the most is the two-page mode settings. The other > frequent change I make is for paper size. If the book really fills up the > scanner bed, then A4 is a better setting than letter, but I make this > adjustment for each scan. > > Control-shift-K starts continuous scanning and pressing space interrupts it. > > Control-shift-R starts the recognition process. > > When you're done with scanning and recognition, and it's time to save your > work, here's how to do it: > > Press alt and then F to get to the file menu. Press E to go to the save > text as dialogue box. This is a baby dialogue box compared to the options > one, so pressing tab will get you through it. Set your options for saving > text as follows: > > 1. Filename, type in what you want. The default is Untitled0. > 2. Save as type, rich text format RTF. (This is crucial if for no other > reason than to keep the volunteers on this list happy! <smile> Seriously > though, it is the best option and it is the second selection as you arrow > down the combo box.) > 3. Save button > 4. Cancel button > 5. All pages, checked, this is the second option in this combo box. > 6. File options, create a single file for all pages, checked, fourth option > in the combo box. > 7. Retain layout, retain font and font size, checked, second option in the > combo box. > 8. Keep pictures, not checked. > 9. Open document after saving, not checked > 10. Format settings button, this is a repeat of the format settings you set > in the earlier tools menu settings. You can press space here to check your > settings, but it's really not necessary. > 11. Save in, select whatever folder you choose for saving scans, I use my > ebooks. > 12. List view, let's you select files or folders, but nothing to set. > > Once you've made the selections above, tab over to the save button and press > space to save. Now you have a lovely scanned book in RTF to submit to > BookShare. Once you've set these options in the save text as dialogue box, > they remain the same until you change them again, so in future, you only > have to put in the filename and tab over to save. > > Happy scanning! I still say FineReader is the best scanning software out > there! And remember, it's not wise to disagree with the Mistress of > FineReader! <smile> > > Peace and Hope, > > Donna > >