MSX Computer Magazine online (related questions)

By Ivan

Ascended (9341)

Ivan's picture

23-05-2010, 00:24

What are the best tools for scanning magazines/books to PDF?
Has anyone tried PDFCreator?
And what about DPI settings? What are the recommended DPI settings for b&w and colour scanning?

Years ago I scanned the MSX Technical Data Book but I did not create myself the PDF (nor I do remember the DPI settings I used!).

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By flyguille

Prophet (3031)

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23-05-2010, 00:31

for B/W text 300dpi.
For pictures, 600dpi (the large number of printers use 600dpi).

make sure that the scanner also do it in 300/600dpi, so you avoid the rescale algoritm downgrade.

By Ivan

Ascended (9341)

Ivan's picture

23-05-2010, 00:44

or B/W text 300dpi.
For pictures, 600dpi (the large number of printers use 600dpi).
Are you sure about those settings? I've just visited HP website and their most basic printers support higher resolutions: link.

By flyguille

Prophet (3031)

flyguille's picture

23-05-2010, 01:05

yes, 1200dpi with antialiassing incl.... but that size will be enormous, and the original magazine trustme, is not 1200dpi the original that you want to scan.

By gargamel

Expert (101)

gargamel's picture

23-05-2010, 12:45

I would recommend 600 dpi for B&W and 300 dpi for color.

Don't use a lossy format like JPEG for text, use TIFF. This would also be valuable when the OCR software is good enough.

By MsxKun

Paragon (1115)

MsxKun's picture

23-05-2010, 13:03

Most standard resolutions for printing are: 300 dpi CMYK for colour, 600 dpi for GrayScale, and 1200 dpi for black text or line works, 1 bit colour, so it doesn't fit so much.
Of course, as gargamel says, TIFF . LZW compresion is fine. JPG is not, but if it's for personal use, well.. you can, but set compression to minimum.
When a page is a mix of everthing.. well.. you can scan it 2/3 times, or choice your priority (text or images...) For non professional use, 300 will be enought most of the times, but if there is a lot of text, you could consider 600 (but again, 64 pages at 600 will be bit of a pain).

And, not less important, when scanning already printed images, remember about Moiré: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moiré_pattern

By Ivan

Ascended (9341)

Ivan's picture

23-05-2010, 14:00

I am scanning at 600dpi with photo mode (the function that reduces the occurrence of moiré is disabled) and saving the images as BMPs. The quality is excellent. I will show you the results after converting the files to PDF.

By Ivan

Ascended (9341)

Ivan's picture

23-05-2010, 14:17

of course, before converting to PDF, I will compress the images (probably to TIFF).

By Manuel

Ascended (19273)

Manuel's picture

23-05-2010, 14:19

You can also save as PNG of course. At least you have a decent compression then and it's still lossless. Although, in the professional world, TIFF is (or used to be) the format to go. BMP is ... well, let me say... unusual for this. Biggest issue is that it's uncompressed and is always 24 bpp.

To prevent moire, make sure you scan in such a resolution, that you can resolve the halftone-dots from the original print. With good software you can later downscale the images to e.g. 300 dpi and the moire won't hurt you anymore.

By tcruise

Master (133)

tcruise's picture

25-05-2010, 13:41

Not that BMP is a very good cross platform format, but if you save with the RLE option (OS/2 BMP) then it saves the bitmap by sorting and then optimizing the pallette. Can reduce pictures (that are not photos) down to a 10th of their size.

By RobertVroemisse

Paragon (1325)

RobertVroemisse's picture

25-05-2010, 16:34

Tip: When using Adobe software for scanning/tweaking, etc. Save your file (for example test.bmp) and open/save it in another (non Adobe) program. This way, a lot of useless metadata will disappear from the file and the filesize will be reduced.

Another tip: When you have created a PDF, try to do a OCR recognition with Acrobat Professional. This way, a lot of graphical data will become just text and the filesize will be reduced again. Another advantage of this method is that you can copy/paste the text.