----- Original Message ----- From: "John Cartmell" <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <davidpilling@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 11:22 PM Subject: [softwarelist] Re: Image display quality in DPlingscan
On 23 Apr, Dave Barnett <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:In a recent message Tim Powys-Lybbe <tim@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:> In message of 23 Apr, Dave Barnett <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:>> I'll now go and have another try at scanning some family >> trees that I found in an old book.> I have taken several hints from a company, now dormant, called > ArchiveCDBooks. They scanned loads of old books, many with family > trees. They achieved very readable and relatively small files using > their overhead book scanner. They probably had superior software to > clean up the images.They did indeed. I have bought some of their CDs. Somewhere on their site they had a description of their process. They did a straightforward cleanup (that is an oxymoron in this context) and then a selective expansion to overcome the curvature of the page at the spine (custom software, I don't think it is released commercially). A searchable index was produced where the original pages were good enough for OCR.Better would have been to use a purpose-made scanner. I've only ever seen one(at Manchester Metropolitan University library) and it has a perspex right-angle edge. The book is placed on the right angle with one page flat horizontal and the other dangling vertical. The scanner works to within acouple of millimetres of the edge and the scanned page is completely flat - sono distortion. NB Scanner for photocopying - but the principle is the same.
The Plustek OptickBook 3600 enables fragile books to be scanned as described above. This is a USB scanner with drivers for Windows.The Birmingham Central Library (Archives & Heritage) had excellent facilities
for scanning books this way.JV
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