[Coco] [Color Computer] some help to scan books

[stinger30au]

this may interest a few of you and may give you the incentive to start
scanning some of your own collection of books / magazines for
preservation of the coco


i am running Linux Mint, based on Ubuntu
http://www.linuxmint.com/

it has a program that is easily installed calld

gscan2pdf

http://gscan2pdf.sourceforge.net/


this software was written for projects like this and its all open
source and all free

when you get the dvd with coco-link magazines on it  that was a
learning experience for me

i did 1989 first and the files were about 200 meg in size each.
thats cos i did them in grey scale.
silly me. 
gscan2pdf (i didnt know at the time as i admit i didnt read the
instructions, i just hooked in) will let me change scan options per page.
so i eventually figured out i could do the front and rear pages of the
book in colour like the original and then scan the rest as "lineart"

lineart simpley scans in pure black and white. and takes up bugger all
room to save

some settings i used that may interest you
when i scanned the colour pages i did them at 300 dpi
when i did the remaining in lineart i did them at 400 dpi
when i did this i got the file sizes frm 200 meg all the way down to
about 70 meg per book

if you want to scan the books non-destructively then you will need a
single sheet scanner and its going to take some time.
wen i did the coco-link mags they were about 50 pages long. it would
take about an hour per book.
it would be quikcer if you had a fast scanner though.
my current scanner is a canon lide20 usb snail pace scanner, but it
did the trick. very very slowly, but it worked.

the problem you will run in to with single sheet scanners is with
large magazines/books etc that wil not sit correctly on the glass

if you open up a large book and put both covers flat on the table
there is a huge bow in the middle from where the pages come up from
the spine.

that big bow in the middle when it gets scanned will create a black
area on the scans on the edge and it will look horrible.


theres a few ways around this.

fist is to get a scanner with an ADF - autmatic document feeder

this lets you put say 20 pages in and it feeds them thru automatically
just like a fax machine

for this to happenen you need to cut the spin off the book with a
guilotine first.

im happy to do this with my collection to save them for ever in pdf.
unfortuanelty theres many around who dont want to do this, but fail to
remember that paper wont last forever and they need to be pdf converted


there is however an alternative i have stumbled across in my travels
in the past few days

i have found a program for windows called snapster

http://www.snapter.atiz.com/


you can buy the s/w or get it for free if you send an email to 20
friends and they read the emails fron snapster


what this software does is pretty ingenious. you can take a photo of a
book open and it will  make a proper pdf from both pages

i tried this with a elcheapo samgsung 7 megapixel camera


it wasnt to bad, but i think the camera is what let it down. you need
good lighting and a great camera.

after i found this i went hunting to find ideas to build a proper
setup to scan books via camera and found this


http://www.instructables.com/id/Quickly-Scan-a-Textbook-With-a-Camera/


infact this setup also tells you to use the snapster software!


so there is an alternative if you willing to play round a bit

hope this gives you all some encouragement to scan away