The Job:- We have a 350 page book that we need to scan for republication / re-printing.- Once scanned the images will be "pasted" into either Microsoft Word or into Corel Draw X3... then PDF'd and sent to the printer to print a thousand or more copies of the book.
The Status:- It is all black & white book with about about 200 photos.- We are scanning on a Brother MFC 9700 Multi-Function Laser Printer/Scanner using the Microsoft Scanner & Camera Wizzard. - We do not have Corel on the machine with the Scanner- For the text we have been experimenting with different dpi settings (300 & 600) & different file formats (JPG, PNG, TIFF) (600 dpi looks best)
The Plan:- is to scan the book first for text... - then re-scan the pages with photo's... using different settings... if necessary.- Once scanned each page will have to be cropped in Corel Photo Paint (on another machine) and then resaved.- Then later imported or pasted into either Microsoft Word or Corel Draw X-3 (on another machine)
The Questions:1 - What is the best file format to save the scanned images? (This will be our Master Copy).. JPG seems to make the B&W files very big !?.. To maximize quality maybe PNG or TIFF?.. What do you guys suggest?2 - Once cropped in Photo Paint X3 - What format should we save them in?(Remember they will be later imported or repasted into either Corel Draw X3 or Word)
Thanks for any help on this.
Mel_3 said:We are scanning on a Brother MFC 9700 Multi-Function Laser Printer/Scanner using the Microsoft Scanner & Camera Wizzard.
heh, I have same unit, someone gave it to me for free recently
Mel_3 said:plan is to scan the book first for text... then re-scan the pages with photo's... using different settings... if necessary.
I'd scan the whole page at once. if the original print is in rough condition anyway, 300 DPI & greyscale is fine.
Mel_3 said: Once scanned each page will have to be cropped in Corel Photo Paint (on another machine) and then resaved.
You can crop bitmaps very quickly inside Draw directly with the new X3 crop tool.
Mel_3 said:Once cropped in Photo Paint X3 - What format should we save them in?
I tried a test: but it wasn't a book. I scanned 3 pages using Microsoft Scanner and it made a multi-page tiff. Now... to tease you, in X5, I was able to bring multi-page tiff into DRAW, then ungroup it into 3 separate files.
We are scanning the entire pages but the b&w pic's morie really bad.
We cut two books up, interleaved the pages so we didn't have to flip pages... put about 35 at a time in the scanner... set it up for b&w scan at 300 dpi and to save as a PNG because it looked the same as a TIFF and the file size was so much smaller as a PNG. That gave us the pages as text.
Now we are scanning greyscale at 500 dpi so we use Effects - Noise - Remove Morie ... and save the cropped results as a 300 dpi pic. We are following instructions fromhttp://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/photopaint/ht/cppremovemoire.htmwhich tells us to scann about 2x the dpi we want to reduce the morie.
Then we have to crop the text pages & then paste the cropped pic's in place... a lot of work for over 300 page book :) Guess I'm going to learn how to use record macro's & keystroke playback :)
Thanks again for the help folks !
Mel_3 said:We are scanning the entire pages but the b&w pic's moire really bad.
Are you scanning in 1-bit or greyscale? B&W.. I think of B&W as 1-bit. A pixel is either black or white.
Mel_3 said: set it up for b&w scan at 300 dpi and to save as a PNG because it looked the same as a TIFF and the file size was so much smaller as a PNG. That gave us the pages as text. Now we are scanning greyscale at 500 dpi so we use Effects - Noise - Remove Morie ... and save the cropped results as a 300 dpi pic.
Well you can go that route, but I'd go different way. I'd still scan the whole thing and just process areas of each scan separately - using masks.
So... I don't think you need separate scans for pics and text. Esp. if orig art is rough to begin with.
Mel_3 said:Then we have to crop the text pages & then paste the cropped pic's in place... a lot of work for over 300 page book
Yes.. I think you are working too hard for this project by scanning and placing images separately from text. Good luck though!
For photos PNG files are about 40% more compact than uncompressed TIFF, the only type of TIFF that is highly portable. (The range of possible TIFF formats is enormous, and unless you choose LZW or RLE compression, you are likely to produce files that most software cannot read.) PNG is an emerging standard for lossless compression. I archive PNG images on CDR, and will start using Scott's trick of a small companion JPEG, which is a great idea.If you need more pro info about image formats ,you can go for searching on google.
The .TIFF file extension is often referred to as "Totally Infinite Formats". But if some Defense Department main-frame saves satellite downloads in some obscure TIF format with an encrypted header - who cares? TGA's are my personal favorite on the PC because by default there is no DPI information, but I've seen more screwed up TGA files than TIFF (reverse order bytes, etc). I still pull TGA files off 15yr old 5 1/4 floppies and they work fine, and Tagged Interchange Format (TIFF) is far more widely supported with current software. Sure the heck isn't PCX - now there's a screwed up format.
TIFFs are portable between platforms with ease, and Photoshop is probably going to be the standard for at least the next decade, I'd go with the odds.