Document Scanner Recommendations?

[Belike10]

Hi
,
In my suggestion you should buy Sheet-fed Scanners because this type of document scanner can digitalise documents sheet by sheet and operates almost like a fax machine. You feed documents in one end, they are passed over a sensor and converted into an electronic file. Most sheet-fed document scanners have an automatic document feeder which can take multiple pages in a row. Sheet-fed devices are the ideal document scanners for companies required to scan high volumes.

[ehbowen]

I have some bound issues of Railway Age magazine from the 1950s which I'd like to scan. They're printed on a non-standard oversize (9" by 12") page format and have 26 weekly issues in each volume...over 1000 pages; very hard to open flat. I've had some success with using the book scanner at one of the local universities, but I'd be interested in acquiring my own scanner for these and other volumes if I can do so at a reasonable cost (roughly $500 or less). Any recommendations?

[Teriodin]

Something like the CZUR range may have what you need. I think they have yet another version coming out soon. Here's an example: https://www.amazon.com/CZUR-Aura-Portab ... 179&sr=8-4

[Orpheus]

I have some bound issues of Railway Age magazine from the 1950s which I'd like to scan. They're printed on a non-standard oversize (9" by 12") page format and have 26 weekly issues in each volume...over 1000 pages; very hard to open flat. I've had some success with using the book scanner at one of the local universities, but I'd be interested in acquiring my own scanner for these and other volumes if I can do so at a reasonable cost (roughly $500 or less). Any recommendations?

I hired a person to scan in my whole library from 2010-2017. For that we used a specialized book scanner from Plustek https://plustek.com/us/products/index.p ... k-scanners which allows you to scan without breaking the spine of the book. (I wore out two scanners.) I then donated my whole library to a school.

If I had to scan in a whole library myself I would use a high resolution camera(s) and a set up from https://diybookscanner.org/

As an experiment I used this design https://www.instructables.com/id/Bargai ... board-Box/ to scan in a few books that accumulated after the project was over. I was not satisfied with the quality compared to the Plustek. With the Plustek I was getting 600dpi quality every time which makes a big difference when you OCR the book later (I use Abobe Clearscan, but Adobe has got a better upgrade that I will use when I get newer version of Acrobat).

But with the camera you have to have a good enough camera so the you can lock the focus and has a very high resolution (expensive) . You also have to develop a workflow so that you position the book in exactly the same place. The reason for that will become apparent when it comes to post-processing the book. And believe me you will have to post-process the book if you want quality similar to the Plustek and you value your eyes. There are a lot of free post-processing tools available at the DIYscanner site but they are all PC based as the Mac versions are now obsolete. But I got them working using Win 10 in Parallels.

So if you are only doing occasional book scanning like I now do, and you want high quality scans then I would go with the Plustek. If you are satisfied with a lower quality of scan go with the camera solution.

If you have a large number of books/magazines to scan, and want high quality scans and you can't afford to hire someone (I was living in India at the time so it was affordable) then use the the DYIscanner set up but with an expensive camera to ensure high resolution and ability to lock the focus on the page (you do not want to have to refocus for every page).

[Orpheus]

Something like the CZUR range may have what you need. I think they have yet another version coming out soon. Here's an example: https://www.amazon.com/CZUR-Aura-Portab ... 179&sr=8-4

Looks interesting, and portable enough to bring to a Library. I wonder what the actual output is like in real life work?

I read the reviews, it only gives a max of 240 dpi resolution. No where near the quality of a good scanner.

[rwg]

I actually bought a CZUR scanner (ET 16) after reading about it in one of the above posts, and I am reasonably happy with it. Scanning is fairly fast, and one feature that I find especially useful is that it can automatically convert a two-page scan into two separate pages. It can also produce OCRed PDFs, but I use Acrobat to OCR the PDFs it produces. It's also handy for scanning large documents bigger than A4.

[Orpheus]

I actually bought a CZUR scanner (ET 16) after reading about it in one of the above posts, and I am reasonably happy with it. Scanning is fairly fast, and one feature that I find especially useful is that it can automatically convert a two-page scan into two separate pages. It can also produce OCRed PDFs, but I use Acrobat to OCR the PDFs it produces. It's also handy for scanning large documents bigger than A4.

Glad to hear that feedback. But I am just thinking that a scan at 240 dpi can not be as good as at 600 dpi. Can you adjust the DPI? Which version of Acrobat are you using? If it enhances the scan and then does ocr using "editable text and Images" it might work because Acrobat figures out what font is being used and uses that. It is no longer a bitmap image. And the adobe font is an editable vector font so no matter how big you enlarge the text there is no pixelization.

[rwg]

The default setting is 250 DPI, but it can be increased to 300 DPI. I have been using the default setting, which seems sufficient for my needs. I have an old version of Acrobat Pro 10, which fortunately still works on Mojave. By way of experiment, I just scanned something and created a searchable PDF with the CZUR software. There seems to be little difference with the searchable PDF created by Acrobat, and there is no pixelation when enlarging the text. But whether it would meet professional requirements I don't know.

[Orpheus]

The default setting is 250 DPI, but it can be increased to 300 DPI. I have been using the default setting, which seems sufficient for my needs. I have an old version of Acrobat Pro 10, which fortunately still works on Mojave. By way of experiment, I just scanned something and created a searchable PDF with the CZUR software. There seems to be little difference with the searchable PDF created by Acrobat, and there is no pixelation when enlarging the text. But whether it would meet professional requirements I don't know.

Thank you for the feedback. After years of scanning experience 300 dpi would be the minimum I would accept. The reason is that I have to actually use the text and I want to reduce eye strain. Acrobat Pro 10 uses "Clearscan" and "down samples it to 600 dpi." Not sure what that means if the original scan is less than 600 dpi But whatever it means the output is excellent. What they do is replace the image of the text with a custom made font and place it in the text. The font is thus scalable to any size without pixilization. And if you you set up your commenting preferences correctly whatever text you highlight is also made into a comment, and placed in the searchable comments section.

BTW are there other models of that scanner with higher dpi?

[andiwill]

Hi,
Can you explain what is your basic need for document scanning after that i will explain you in better way. please let me know