[Coco] Re: scan documents and turn into pdf

[farna at att.net]

JPG is great for photos, and as mentioned, horrible for text! PDF is basically a form of PostScript -- it uses the same technology. That's over simplification I know, but will suffice for now. A PDF file is very much like an encapsulated PostScript file -- it has all the information needed to reproduce the document in the file, including font definitions, and does justice to graphics as well. There's not much better for both graphics and text, and it's widely used now that the patents have run out! 

There is no need to rescan the documents assuming you're running on a PC or Linux machine. There are utilities that install as a printer and will generate PDF output. The one I use most is "PDF995" (www.pdf995.com). There is a $9.95 registartion fee or the program will display an ad banner while it's processing the file or for 30 seconds or so, whichever comes first. It's not intrusive at all. I don't know the name of such utilities for a Linux box, but I'm sure they are out there. Just load your files into whatever program you use to edit them then "print" using the driver. It creates a PDF file. At the PDF995 site there are also free (with the reasonable ad, or, you guessed it, a $9.95 registration fee) utilities to merge multiple PDFs into a single file and to edit PDF files. I use PDF995 extensively in my little magazine publishing ventures, and to create the latest revision of "Tandy's Little Wonder". 

--
Frank Swygert
Publisher, "American Motors Cars" 
Magazine (AMC)
For all AMC enthusiasts
http://farna.home.att.net/AIM.html
(free download available!)

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
Message: 5
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 07:26:06 -0400
From: Mike Pepe <lamune at doki-doki.net>
Subject: Re: [Coco] scan documents and turn into pdf
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Message-ID: <44F6C74E.5090303 at doki-doki.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Diego Barizo wrote:
> Mike Pepe wrote:
>> Hi guys,
>>
>> I will turn these into PDFs. Currently they're a bunch of 600 dpi b&w 
>> tiffs.
>>
>> For those of  you who have done this before, any comments? should I 
>> resample them down to 300dpi, for example?
>>
>> thanks
>>
>> -Mike
>>
> If I might ask. Why as PDFs instead of JPGs ? Or other graphic format?
> Also, AFAIK changing the DPI after scanning does not alter the image, 
> that's information used for the printer, and does not change the file size.
> 
> Diego
> 

Diego, you ever see a 400 page jpeg of text? :)

Jpeg is a lossy format intended for continuous tone images, not books. 
PDF is a document format.

If I resample the 600dpi images down 50%, it reduces the size just fine. 
In fact I think it looks a little better because the process smooths out 
the edges a bit by changing them to shades of grey.

-Mike