[bookshare-discuss] Re: Better Scans?
- From: "Allison Hilliker" <amhillik@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 10 May 2004 15:04:54 -0400
Hi guys,
Thanks for the tips. I actually played around with a couple of the
suggestions in scanning last night, and things are looking a bit better.
Will try a couple more of 'em later today. I agree with Mary that we do get
pickier as the technology gets better. I hadn't thought of it that way, but
it's so true! I too remember that old Reading Edge!
Also, CJ, I agree with all of your comments about Bookshare being like
having a library available to us at anytime. It's one of the things I love
most. I can for through the books and just browse as sighted people do in a
library. I don't think I've ever had that before Bookshare, and it is
incredible! Totally love it.
Thanks all, and keep the tips coming!
Allison
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mary Otten" <maryotten@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, May 09, 2004 10:48 PM
Subject: [bookshare-discuss] Re: Better Scans?
> Hi Allison,
> Fine Engine is generally regarded as the better of the two ocr engines
that are included with K1000. But there are times when the other engine,
rtk, does better, because it doesn't put so many junk characters in. So if
> you get a book where you're finding that no matter what you do, you still
get plenty of junk characters, feel free to experiment and change to rtk and
see what that does. On a suite of varying documents, fine engine
> tests out better. but there are definitely times when rtk will prove a
better choice.
> Ranked spelling is one of the options you will find in the tools menu of
K1000. After you do a scan, you can use ranked spelling and see a list of
what the program thinks are mistakes, and those which occur most
> frequently will show up first. It will also give you a percentage of
"correct" words. So you might start out, say, with a percentage of words it
thinks are correct at 99.38. And then you have this list of words that you
can
> look through, and choices, such as ignore all or add to word list or
replace all. It will offer you a suggested replacement, and you can accept
or type your own. You can also see some context for the first occurrence of
> the word it thinks is an error. Sometimes, errors are perfectly correct
words that just aren't in its dictionary. You can also go into the regular
spell checker and set some things in there, like telling it to ignore words
that
> start with upper case letters, if you want, or words with number in them,
or words that are all uppre case. Save any changes you make in your settings
files, and from now on, when you use ranked spelling or the spell
> checker, you won't see those types of words marked as errors.
> As for brightness settings, that really depends on the scanner you use.
Settings that work well on a given book with my scanner might not do so well
with yours, and vice versa. I tend to start with mass market
> paperbacks somewhere around 60 or a bit higher and then experiment and see
if I need to adjust one way or the other, as print in those is often kind of
dark. Scan a few pages from various portions of the book at a
> given setting and run ranked spelling against that, then see what sorts of
errors you get. And adjust brightness up or down accordingly. Or you can use
the scanning optimization wizzard which is one of the items in the
> "scan" menu. I have not found it to be particularly helpful. But I think
I'm in the minority on that score. Aside from brightness, there is also
scanner resolution which you can adjust, or threshholding settings of
dynamic
> or gray scale which can be tried. I know Guido has said he often gets good
results with gray scale and 400 dots per inch resolution, whereas I've found
that those settings rarely if ever help. So you can see that it
> really depends on your particular scanner and the books or other materials
you scan.
> But its funny how we get picker as this technology improves. I started
with Open book back in 1994 or 1995. And I thought it was pretty amazing to
be able to go and get readable output from pretty much any book I
> could fit on the scanner. Now, with much better ocr technology, I find
myself being much more critical of things I scan. I guess we're never
satisfied.
> Mary
>
>
>
Other related posts:
