Question: I am going to buy a scanner- advice? Also, advice on scanning books? Answer: Yes I can give you instructions on how to do it. I have two scanners. I have had a 3-in-1 HP printer that I have used to scan. But recently I purchased a large format scanner made by Mustek that is wonderful. I have three or four Elephant Folio size books that I may eventually scan. I have already used this scanner to scan all of the images from my original Martyr’s Book which is about 10” X 15”. I have also used it to scan a ton more smaller pages as well. This scanner is the Mustek A3 2400S-Large Format (11.7”-16.5”) Color flatbed scanner. It is my second scanner made by Mustek. The other one was a fine scanner as well. 1) Put a thick BLACK PIECE OF PAPER behind every page that you scan. This is the most important trick that I can advise you to do. It will greatly lessen the bled though of the text, etc. for the other side of the page that you are scanning. 2) Clean your scanner bed. 3) Keep a can of air handy because pieces of you old paper and crud will fall off of your book when you are putting it on and taking it off your scanner bed. This need to be blown off. If you try to get it off with your fingers, you will put a smudge on your scanner bed. 4) Make sure that the book page is completely flat against the scanner bed. Put the black sheet of thick paper in over the page you are going to scan. I usually put another book on top of the black paper and then I put two heavy steel angle plates that I made as a tool & die maker apprentice to press down on top of that. 5) Make sure that the sun is not coming in a window and shinning on to your scanner bed. 6) Scan at 600 dpi. 7) Scan the image as a color image 8) Adobe Photoshop Elements is a great inexpensive program to use to scan your image. If you have this then save your scans in the Photoshop format as a .PSD file. I use this this way every time I scan an 18th century document. If you can’t save as a Photoshop file, then save as a .jpg file. Even if you can save as a Photoshop file, in the end you will need to convert file to a .jpg file. There are several reasons why. One is that if you want to make a .pdf file of your book or section of your book a .jpg file works very well. We often use Microsoft Publisher to print our book. It like .jpg files as well. You may ask, “when not just start off with a .jpg file. .JPG files deteriorate every time you open and close them. Photoshop files do not. So, as long as I am working (cleaning up a page, etc.) I keep the files in the Photoshop format. The final thing that I do is to turn each pages file into a .jpg. 9) You have to number each saved page file with 1 thru however many pages there are. In addition, this book, as well as most all other books from the 18th century, have a signature/letter and numbering system that the printer and binders used (We still use) to assemble the printed book. Some, but not most, 18th century books have page numbers. Most don’t. Instead they have a way to number the signatures and the page inside each signature. “What is a signature”, you may ask. Your books will most likely have had 4 pages that were folded in half then stuck inside one another to make sixteen pages. Each one of these bunches are called a signature. The first signature of your book will be signature “A”. Your tile page will not have an “A” on it, but your third page will probably have “A2” on the bottom right side of it. You will see this system of letter/numbers at the bottom right of every other page through the first 8 pages of every signature. Then there is no letter/number system until you get through the next 8 pages. Then you will enter a new signature that should be designated by the letter “B”. This system repeats though out the alphabet system. If it is a long book, after it reaches Z it will go to “AA”, “BB”, etc. until “ZZ” and then on to “AAA”, etc. I have not looked through your book, but in rare cases the signatures may be more or less than the somewhat standard size of 16 pages per signature. Right in the middle of our Old Testament we have an 8 page signature. I have no idea why. You may find this somewhere too. Some of our books have 12 page signatures. But the alphabet system is still used. You may find this somewhere too. 10) Make folders to keep each 16 pages of your signatures in. Create folders A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, etc. There is no “J” nor “V” nor, “W” signatures. I can tell you more about that later if you are interested. For now, So don’t let that trip you up. Save only the corresponding pages for the corresponding signatures in these folders. 11) Numbering each page that you scan so that they you can be reconstruct later takes some care. The page files 1- 99… or however many pages that you have, need to be numbered in order and also put in the correct folder. Yes you will number them 1, 2, 3, 4, … and so on like we do today. But you will also have to order them the 18th century style. Start off with p1 Title page. Next will be p2 (page 2 is often blank). Next will be p3 A2. Next will be p4. Next will be p5 A3. Next will be p6. Next will be p7. Next will be p8 A4. From the next page (p9) thru p16 there will be no more “A” designation. That will start up again with the next signature which will be signature “B”. That page will be p17 B1. This may make little sense. If so, then read this again with your 18th century book in your hand and I think that that will help you figure it out. The most important things are A) BLACK PAPER BEHIND EACH PAGE WHEN SCANNED B) SET UP YOUR SIGNATURE FOLDER SYSTEM YOUR YOU COMPUTER C) LABEL EACH PAGE CORRECTLY AND SAVE THEM IN THE CORRECT SIGNATURE FOLDER. D) SCAN AT 600 DPI E) SAVE AS .JPG AFTER ALL IS DONE F) BACK UP, BACK UP, BACK UP . If you don’t you will hate yourself. Burn to a writable cd or DVD if you know how. And now to your next question that I know that you will have after you finish scanning all those pages. On your desktop, create a folder labeled MY BOOK. Copy the contents of the DVD into this folder. You pages were scanned into Microsoft Photoshop. They are PSD files. You can reopen this type file as much as you like without losing any image quality. If saved instead as a jpg file, the quality will lessen each time the file is opened. So don’t save these files that you are working on as .jpg file until you have finished working with them. The reason that you copy these files from the DVD to your computers hard drive is because your program will run faster off your hard drive than working from the DVD. Next, create a separate .jpg sub file in this folder in which to save your work. Be sure to save often when working on each page! The final files will be saved in this .jpg labeled folder. Also create a sub file in the .jpg folder labeled, sig. A, sig. B, sig. C., etc. So when you are working on pages in sig. B save them in the appropriate folder. Label each page with their page numbers. Remember!! SAVE, SAVE, SAVE, SAVE. Save as you work. There is nothing more frustrating than to lose your work. Open Adobe Photoshop Elements. Open the page you need to clean up. First make sure the page is square (Ctrl T). Use the grid lines on the side and pull them over but dont release the mouse. Pull the ones on the side to compare to the horizontal lines, if any. Do the same with the vertical lines. When straight, pull the grid lines over and eliminate as much as possible of the outer edge of the page (top and bottom). This gives less area to clean up. Crop at the grid lines. This is where I stop using Photoshop. I open up Paint Shop Pro X3 and do the rest of my cleaning up in that program, but in case you don’t have that program nor want to spend $80 to $90 on it, I will tell you how to do it the much harder way. Your document will also not look as good. But here it goes on with Photoshop (the longer and harder way). Increase the size of the page until it fills the monitor. Next, click Enhance, Adjust lighting, and Levels. Adjust the levels a little to the right, but not so much that it darkens too much. Next, click Enhance, Adjust lighting, then Brightness/Contrast. Move Contrast all the way to the right to 100%, and then move the Brightness to the left to around 28% to darken the text. This will vary per document. Click OK. Next, click Enhance, Adjust lighting, and Shadows/Highlights. Turn Contrast all the way to the right. Next, click Enhance, then Convert to Black and White, then choose Newspaper, then OK. This step really whitens up the text. If the text is too light, click Enhance, Adjust lighting, then Brightness/Contrast. Move the Brightness to the left maybe to as much as 100% and the Contrast all the way to the right again. Now you should have a pretty good looking document. If not, play with it a bit. Now it is time to clean up the page. Take a look at the page and look for nasty looking areas. Go to Magnifying glass and blow up the image until it fills the screen or even larger if needed. Click the Eraser on the left side of the screen. You will need to adjust the size of the Eraser as necessary. First start out BIG and clean up the larger clear area of the page. If using a PC and you accidentally erase some of the text, push down on the Ctrl key, then the Z key. This allows you to back up and removes the mistake. If using a Mac, use the Apple key instead of the Ctrl key. If for some reason when you use the Eraser function, white does not appear when things are erased, then you may get a checkered pattern instead. If so, you will need to flatten the image. Go to the top of the screen, click on Layer, then on the drop down menu, click on Flatten Image. Now you are ready to clean up the page. Use the Size button on the top left to shrink the eraser so that it is small enough to clean up inside the letter e or other small areas. You can adjust this to whatever size that helps you go the fastest. The document does not have to be perfect. From time to time, shrink the page down to see how it looks when it is the actual size of the document (approximately 4 or 5 inches wide and 6 or 8 inches tall). If it looks good and readable to you, it probably is. When you are finally finished with a page, save as a PSD. In fact, you should have saved a bunch of times by then. Each time you replace the original file, then the subsequent files afterwards. Then save in the separate jpg subfolder at the highest resolution jpg file that you can. Eventually, you will want both files, but the jpg will be the one that I will need to make the final book.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 16:44:22 +0000
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