[bksvol-discuss] Re: discuss] Scanning Trade Paperbacks

  • From: Monica Willyard <rhyami@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 19:12:28 -0400

Hi, Becky. I just saw your message, and you may have gotten a ton of replies already. I have two suggestions that you may not have been given. One is to make a little time to listen to the audio recording of the chat we did about getting better scan because Scott Blanks and Pratik give some truly helpful tips on working with paperbacks. They helped me get my scans up to around 99 percent accuracy in just ten minutes. You'll find their ideas close to the beginning of the chat, so you'll be off and running pretty quickly. The chat can be found at http://www.friendsofbookshare.org in the archives section.


My other suggestion has to do with some settings that are turned on in Openbook by default that tend to cause problems with scanning books, especially paperbacks. In Openbook, press alt g for the settings menu and choose scanning settings. Use your tab key to tab over to an option that says despeckle. If that says it's checked, press your space bar to uncheck it. Now hit tab again until you hear something about light text on a dark background. If that's on, turn it off with your space bar. Finally, unless you're scanning books with a lot of European symbols and such, tab to the setting that says language analyst and turn that off with your space bar. I don't know what you like to scan, Becky, so I'll mention one more thing before we hit the ok button. If you think you'll mostly be scanning paperbacks, you might want to turn on 2-page scanning in the section as well. If you only scan paperbacks rarely, you can just turn it on when you're actually doing a paperback. Either way, to make this all work, tab over to ok and press enter. Finally, press alt g for the settings menu again and choose to save the settings. Save these with the name "default" without the quotes. Openbook will ask you if you want to overwrite the default file. Tell it yes. Now your Openbook will be ready for scanning paperbacks, your mail, and most hardcover books too. The only time you'll need to change these settings is if you scan a newspaper, glossy magazine, or a hardcover book with a lot of text decoration.

I hope these suggestions will help you out. If anything I've written isn't clear, please don't hesitate to ask for a better explanation. Good luck with your paperback.

Monica Willyard

Becky D. wrote:
I have done some scanning of what I think is called a "trade paperback", which comes down to being a rather inexpensive paperback, about maybe 6 by 8 inches, like the Harlequin Romances are, for example. I think the print quality isn't great or something because I can't get a good scan. I'm most frustrated. Is there any way to improve the quality? I'm using Open Book 7.02. And, please, don't go too techy, or I won't get it! Thanks.

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  • » [bksvol-discuss] Re: discuss] Scanning Trade Paperbacks