Is it still crazy to scan 1000 magazines?

[shortylickens]

Cheers, Aquaman!

 

[Aquaman]

Yo Aquaman! Share with us your enlightened scanning knowledge!

I picked up an Epson GT-S50 duplex document scanner recently, but I'm having some trouble getting the file sizes down. Scanning a color book makes like a 150 - 600 meg file. If I optimize it, it gets smaller but looks terrible. Scanned ebooks available online are like 15 megs for 500 pages with color photos and look great...how the heck do they do that?! I've been tinkering with settings and various scanning programs, but I can't seem to find the right mix of quality vs. file size for PDF output. What do you suggest?

I'm not really familiar with that scanner. The only thing I could suggest is to fiddle with the scanning resolution. For my magazines it's set at 150dpi...... which is acceptable for my purposes.

Are you scanning into PDF? I don't have any experience doing that because my old scanner did not have that option.

Cheers,
Aquaman

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Is this still going?! I can't believe how long it's been.

 

[Kaido]

I'm not really familiar with that scanner. The only thing I could suggest is to fiddle with the scanning resolution. For my magazines it's set at 150dpi...... which is acceptable for my purposes.

Are you scanning into PDF? I don't have any experience doing that because my old scanner did not have that option.

Cheers,
Aquaman

Ah, what are you scanning to - image files?

 

[Aquaman]

Ah, what are you scanning to - image files?

Yes....... jpegs. I'll be converting to PDF's.

Cheers,
Aquaman

 

[rudeguy]

I just started ripping/reripping my 1000+ disc DVD collection.

After 1 day I am starting to think that I am crazy.

Have 4 computers going at once, 31 down, 969 to go.

so you can only do 8 per day, per PC?

Funny. I can rip a whole DVD to ISO at high quality in under 15 minutes.

I think we have caught you in yet another lie.

 

[rudeguy]

Started ripping them to Video_TS but my 4TB NAS filled up too quickly.

When I am done with the DVDs I get to move onto the 250+ Blu-Rays.

You filled up 4TB with 31 discs?

Math does not compute...

 

[Kaido]

Yes....... jpegs. I'll be converting to PDF's.

Cheers,
Aquaman

I'll let you know what my final workflow is. I just picked up Acrobat X this week and I'm REALLY enjoying the scanning features. It's basically a 2-shot deal: the initial ingest covers deskew, OCR, optimization, etc. (all done automatically via presets in one pass) and then you can apply a custom crop across the entire document (trims the edges nicely, so ultimately a simple 2-step process). The files sizes are much more reasonable OOTB as well - they still need some work to get a tad bit smaller (which is what I'm tinkering with), but overall it's looking really good. I think Acrobat X is going to be my one-stop solution for scanning documents & books to PDF!

 

[SonnyDaze]

So Aquaman how many new PCs have you built/bought since you started this? Has new advances in PC technology changed the way you are doing your scanning or your progress?

 

[vshah]

WooHoo!

 

[Kaido]

I'll let you know what my final workflow is. I just picked up Acrobat X this week and I'm REALLY enjoying the scanning features. It's basically a 2-shot deal: the initial ingest covers deskew, OCR, optimization, etc. (all done automatically via presets in one pass) and then you can apply a custom crop across the entire document (trims the edges nicely, so ultimately a simple 2-step process). The files sizes are much more reasonable OOTB as well - they still need some work to get a tad bit smaller (which is what I'm tinkering with), but overall it's looking really good. I think Acrobat X is going to be my one-stop solution for scanning documents & books to PDF!

Screenshot of the basic settings I'm using in Acrobat X right now:

http://i.imgur.com/r7ZS9.jpg

Took about 5 minutes - from start to finish - to scan in a 62-page color cookbook (to a final PDF) that came with my George Foreman or something, one of those 4 x 9" spiral-bound thingies (took the paper cutter to the edges). Scanning on the Epson GT-S50 was pretty quick, then I had it run through the PDF import (deskew, OCR, etc.) then did a manual crop and applied to all the pages (after rotating a few that were off - but the auto-rotate did a pretty good job overall).

Entire document came out to 1.97 megs - 62 searchable pages, in color. Very nice!! Still have some optimization to do - dithering could be improved a bit & the de-skew feature needs some tweaking - but I'm much closer to the bullseye now than before :thumbsup:

 

[Aquaman]

So Aquaman how many new PCs have you built/bought since you started this? Has new advances in PC technology changed the way you are doing your scanning or your progress?

I am still using the same PC 11 years old Athlon XP 1600+. Original Scanner died though and My USB's have kind of crapped out....... maybe time for a new PC.

Cheers,
Aquaman

 

[Ichinisan]

I am still using the same PC 11 years old Athlon XP 1600+. Original Scanner died though and My USB's have kind of crapped out....... maybe time for a new PC.

Cheers,
Aquaman

That CPU didn't exist 11 years ago

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

That CPU didn't exist 11 years ago

Heh. I just put away my Athlon 1100 that I built in Feb 2001 (my join date on AT reflects my system building time). So yeah his 1600+ is at least a year newer than my old Athlon.

 

[Aquaman]

That CPU didn't exist 11 years ago

Well....... I must have a hot tub time machine because that's what I have in my computer.

Cheers,
Aquaman

 

[Aquaman]

695/1011 (68.74%)

Cheers,
Aquaman

 

[Theb]

It's definitely crazy, but congrats on your progress.

 

[ballmode]

now you need like a kindle to carry all those mags

 

[Aquaman]

695/1015 (68.47%) done

Can't wait for the Ion Booksaver to come out in July!

Cheers,
Aquaman

 

[Arcadio]

Wow... Reps for the massive effort, can't wait until you finish.

 

[sdifox]

Wow... Reps for the massive effort, can't wait until you finish.

he is never going to finish.

 

[Crono]

he is never going to finish.

He will

 

[IceBergSLiM]

Why haven't you outsourced this to india yet?

 

[sdifox]

He will

He is scanning at a lower rate than he is getting new magazines. Kind of like USA is spending way more than it makes :biggrin:

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

He is scanning at a lower rate than he is getting new magazines. Kind of like USA is spending way more than it makes :biggrin:

No way... that's impossible. You might be implying that there's $50k of debt on each citizen... but that would be ludicrous.