How to scan a book

lucamax

lucamax

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Hi friends!
I open this topic to ask if you have some good techniques to scan a book. I have a pair of old books and I'm very afraid to see that the time (they are of 1941 and they were of my grandpa) is deleting inks and pages... The problem is that I absolutely don't want to damage more the books, the binding is till very nice and strong... A friend of mine "suggested" me to destroy the volumes and scan pages one per time but it is not acceptable...
Any suggestion?
 
Does it need to be a first-generation direct scan? I recall from my college days (early 90's... yeeesh) that the university had a fair number of photocopiers that were specifically designed to copy books without cracking the spines. Such copiers should be available somewhere near you.

(Quick googling...)

Amazingly, it turns out that the same setup that allows safe book copyign allows safe bookl scanning. See here:
http://www.geneamusings.com/2011/08/i-love-st-bookscan-center-system.html
http://lmulibrary.typepad.com/lmu-library-news/2012/03/rejoice-for-new-photocopiers-abound.html

See if a nearby library has something like this. Or just plunk down the six large and buy your own. Or if you have more time and enthusiasm than you have money, you could *build* your own:
http://www.diybookscanner.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=280
http://zedomax.com/blog/2009/12/12/book-diy-how-to-build-your-own-book-scanner/
 
I take it that the problem is the crease in the center? In the past, I've put weight on top of a book to make the page lay flatter. Another method might be to let the half of the book you aren't scanning hang off of the side of the printer. If all else fails, you can edit the resulting scans in photoshop or some similar program to make them look better.
 
It's a problem, I'm currently working on, too. My solution will be a homebuilt camera book scanner,
using two cameras. Have already those cameras (Canon, as you can CHDK then) and made several
tests with the basic construction, that will use a V-shaped transparency, for NOT damaging the spine.
Just google "book scanner DIY" for getting lots of results. Of course, if you just want to scan a handful
of books, then a camera, a tripod, a glas panel (from a picture frame) and a suitabable lighting may
be enough.
 

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I would agree with that, a digital camera is the best approach. If you can rig up some good white lighting or wait for a day with good daylight the results will be fine. It could also be worth investing in a piece of software like PTLens which will automatically correct for barrel distortion (using the lens information stored in the digital image exif data) and fix paralax issues.
 
For following up after scanning scantailor is quite a good software, I think, and it's free.
( http://scantailor.sourceforge.net/ )
In my experience a remote release is essential, as pressing the button on the (fixed) camera
always brings problmes by shaking.
 
Setting a time delay on the shutter works fine too
 
Sorry? What do you mean by 'too slow'. Setting a delay of a few seconds on the timer simply allows the camera to settle before the shutter fires, its always worked for me, no problems at all
 
That's ok, for some pages, but if you want to scan, or better photograph complete books or maagzines,
I think you'll notice, that this makes the difference between half and one-and-a half hours.
And to my experience, touching the camera directly often brings it out of alignment very
easily, always making post processing more time-consuming. With CHDK, you can deactivate the
autofocus by presetting the focal distance and then it's just raising the transperency, flipping the
page, lowering the transparency and pressing the button for photographing two pages.
And don't worry, I don't want to post current books as files on some dubious servers, but the amount
of magagzines has reached a level now, that makes it difficult to keep them as originals. Additionally,
there are lots of older ones available from libraries, but making paper copies would just increase those
problems ! ;)
 
Dear friends thank you for your help!
I bought an hand scanner, Iriscan Book 2, but I think I just lost my money... The portable scanner is not bad, but to make a good picture I have to repeat the scan several times :(
The problem is that a conventional scanner will probably damage the spine and the picture will be of poor quality in the spine secion of the pages, I tried with another volume of same size and in the middle I have a nice white column.
I've also seen the interest V-shape scanner and I think that it is the only one way to scann without damages for the boook and it seems also confotable to do. On the web I found some sellers, but no one explain the cost of the item, so I think that it will be very very expensive.
The homebuilt solution looks very nice Jemiba! I think that this summer I'll try to make like you: please, if you like to share your experience with us it will be a very nice gift!
 
I'll keep you informed ! It's not a big problem, but several things have to be "developed"
by trial and error. My second camera just is under repair (warranty, I'M NOT TO BLAME !)
and I'm building the remote release, that will trigger both cameras. The best lighting still
is another question ...
 
Maybe the middle course between complete DIY and buying a commercial solution:
http://diybookscanner.myshopify.com/products/diy-book-scanner-kit

Just bear in mind, that the price is without glass panels (relatively cheap) and also without
cameras (principally the most expensive parts), so this one could come up with a price of
about 600 US $ (without shipment), I think.
But in the meantime, I already invested nearly 200,- €, too, still without the cradle !
 
Well, for the base plate and support I'll use wood, too, but for the mechanics I'll rather use
metal profiles (have quite a lot of them in my cellar). And the chosen solution to move the book
up and down won't be mine, I intend to make the V-shaped transperency tiltable, shoule be easier,
at least I hope so.
 
Just to prove, that work actually is going on. I've finished the remote trigger (the red push button) for triggering
both cameras. Just have to look for a better CHDK script, but that site is really great, you just have to chose, which
one better fits your needs. The USB switch is needed, to download the pictures from the cameras, so there's no
need to put the storage cards in a separate reader, or something like that. What I still have to search for, is a
possibility to switch on the cams via USB. Not sure, if this will work, as it isn't supported by all types.
 

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I just received a Czur Shine Ultra scanner. This is the first result:
Project Cancelled p95.jpg


and this is what the book looks like when it's lying under the scanner:
scan raw.png

So it does a pretty good job of flattening the page. The lighting needs some tweaking. It's getting dark now and and both the builtin lamp and my desk lamp will create a reflection on the shiny page.

More tests later.
 
Thanks for posting those, I look forward to seeing more examples. I have been considering buying this or similar photo scanner but wanted to see how well it performed first.
 
Could I ask a related subject to this one, what are the copyright rules for posting images scanned from books?
 
Hobbes said:
So it does a pretty good job of flattening the page. The lighting needs some tweaking. It's getting dark now and and both the builtin lamp and my desk lamp will create a reflection on the shiny page.
Click to expand...
After my last move, I decided to scan my old magazine collection. CZUR scanners seem to be a more reasonable approach over my flat scan. I thank you very much for sharing your experience. The image you attached looks quite good but I still have a few doubts.

a) I see some lightning issues. It seems that additional lamps can fix it (model ET16 and ET18). Shine Ultra has only zenital lights.

b) Many users express disappointment with image quality scans when working with illustrated books. Your B&W page doesn't looks bad, but what about with colour images. Thats important to me because most of my magazines are richly illustrated. In fact I want to make intensive use of DINA3 capability because I want to scan double A4. On my flatbed A4 scan means that I have to stitch the A4 scans into an A3.

Would you please post more feedback?
 
I wonder if results could be improved by laying a sheet of non-glare glass or plexiglas over each page to be scanned. it would presumably flatten out the page, and if adequately clean *shouldn't* show up in the photo. If plexi is used, one edge coudl be beveled so it fits into the crease in the book better. of course if the test or graphics go all the way into the crease, like with a magazine, this method would be troublesome.
 
my next plan is to place a metal frame over the edges of the page to flatten them a bit more (you can see in the scan there's some distortion of the text towards the binding side of the page). I'm also going to experiment with the lighting.
 
With any photographic copying system getting the lighting right is key. I have had endless problems trying to photograph material from the Royal Aero Club Trust archive which is stored in the RAF Museum library at Hendon and has to be viewed in their reading room. The numerous fluorescent tubes plus a few windows causes flare and shadow all over the pace and I have spent ages rigging up shields, reflectors and home-made document lights with mediocre results. Bottom-line is that you need a work area where all these factors can be controlled.
 
I've scanned the same brochure using 2 scanners:

- Hewlett-Packard LJ-4345 multifunction printer, 300 dpi flatbed A4. This is the attached PDF.
- Czur Shine Ultra, ~300 dpi book scanner A3. 4 .jpg pages attached.
(note, there's also an A4 version of this)

Convenience:
The Czur makes it much easier to scan books.
Czur: Flip the page, stamp the foot pedal, repeat.
HP: Lift the lid, flip the page, carefully align the book with the glass plate, lower the lid, press Start. Every 2 pages: press OK on a dialog. Press OK again because the touchscreen didn't register your finger.


Quality:
HP: Good color accuracy, pages have to be aligned with the glass plate manually, half the pages in your scanned document will be upside down because the lid gets in the way. If you use the sheetfeeder, dirt in the sheetfeeding mechanism will show up as black stripes on the scan. Uniform, non-glare lighting means the page always looks as it should.
Czur: Resolution is about the same as the HP. Color accuracy is far worse. Lighting depends on room lighting. I made these scans on a sunny day, with a net curtain closed to prevent direct sunlight on the page. All of the color changes on page 30L are lighting artefacts.
The software will auto-deskew pages, and will correct for curved pages to some extent. The few tests I've done so far have variable results. File 27R is a book scan.

Software:
HP: will scan to TIFF, JPEG or PDF, so it'll create an uncompressed file if you want. When scanning manually, you'll get a PDF file every 2 pages. When you use the sheetfeeder, the PDF will contain all pages in a scan session. Low-quality touchscreen on the device means operation is annoying.
Czur: the native format is JPEG. It can export to other formats, but you can't get an uncompressed file. The software tries to autodetect the edges of the page for deskewing and book scans, but this is hit-and-miss. Sometimes it'll go crazy and think the page is rotated by 45°.
The software is a processor hog: as long as the sw is in scanning mode, it will max out one of my processor cores (on a 2018 decently fast laptop). Scanned images are autosaved to a folder, with timestamped filenames as on the attachments.
The software can do OCR. It'll output to PDF (it can created a PDF with the OCR'ed text in a layer so you can de text search in the PDF), Word, Excel and TIFF.
 

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I got a Czur Shine Ultra for Christmas. I agree with all Hobbes' comments; it is a very simple scanner to use and its inbuilt ability to correct for page curvature into book spines is fine, not perfect but quite acceptable for most jobs and vastly better than using a flatbed. As it is a camera system getting even lighting over the document is essential, the inbuilt vertical light helps but care must be taken with getting ambient lighting right. Once set up it is quick to photo multiple pages, you can hold the pages open with special hold-down tabs in each hand and trigger the photo with the foot pedal. The software deletes the hold-down tab from the scan. Processing of the photos is indeed slow and takes a lot of CPU, but I did not notice any impact on operation of the Czur while the PC was doing this. Comments on-line about Czur are patchy, quite a lot are negative which I find difficult to understand. Perhaps these reflect the long delays on delivery some of the early investors experienced (my Czur was a new unopened item sold on by the original buyer who had given up on delivery and bought an alternative). As a final point it comes in an excellent well-padded carrying case with handle which makes it easy to transport.
 

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