[bookshare-discuss] Re: To Marcus About Scanners
- From: "Pat Pound" <DPOUND@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:48:12 -0500
Hello,
My name is Pat Pound and I am a new Bookshare member. I had a scanner about
ten years ago, but got frustrated iwth it and sold it. I never had software
devoted to blindness re scanning.
I may want to get back into scanning --the current messages have peaked my
interest. Any advice about finding one of the blindness scanning programs at a
lesser price? I had no idea scanners have come down so much and can be carried
along with a laptop. Cool.
Pat
----- Original Message -----
From: Monica Willyard
To: bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 1:28 PM
Subject: [bookshare-discuss] Re: To Marcus About Scanners
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.
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