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Book Scanning (for cheap)

Tags:tech

Building a Scanner

Image: My scanning rig

I built a book scanning rig over a weekend following this instructible:

Bargain-Price Book Scanner from a Cardboard Box

I used my sony NEX-5n camera (although any reasonable camera would work, even a phone) and tripod I already owned, with an IKEA desk lamp as a light source. I tried two cardboard boxes - my first one was bigger than the one in the guide, my second was smaller. The smaller box did a better job. You just need your boxes to be big enough to hold your book, or a bit bigger. Camera setup is trial and error until you get a good picture. For my platen I used a sheet of glass from the front of a photo frame. This was free for me, as I had all the parts lying around.

Tips for Scanning a Book

I'm not an expert on bookscanning, but here are some tips, so you can learn from my mistakes!

• Make sure that old pages don't fold over new ones. You can see this in your camera viewfinder.
• Check your camera viewfinder! Make sure everything you want to scan is in-frame. This will save you a lot of hassle with re-doing shots.
• Make sure you get every page. You can reshoot pages if you need to but it's best to avoid it.
• Make sure the entire page is in sharp focus. Humans can read blurry text, but computers do less well. This is a mistake I made (more on that later.)
• When pushing the platen against a page, push it into the center of the book and then fold it backwards. This way you will get the page nice and flat.
• Don't cut yourself using your platen.

Post-processing

I used scantailor advance for post-processing, but I cannot comment any more on it because I'm pretty sure I did everything wrong. There are other people who actually know how to use it.

For making a pdf, I used img2pdf on the scantailor output, after compressing it to jpeg2000. This resulted in a shitty looking scan, but a smaller file. In the end I gave up on making a scan look good as long as the information was present.

I'm sorry that this page sucks, but I suck at book scanning. Resources from people who actually know what they're doing:

DIY Book Scanner

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