How do I make a PDF of a book?

luckat

I'm giving a 1909 book to a museum, and I'd like to also give them a PDF of it, so people can read it rather than just looking at the cover in a case.

But how do I make a PDF of a book? Could anyone who's done it tell me, please?

J-blk

You'd have to scan every page with OCR (optical character recognition) software (only if you want to give people the ability to search/edit the text in the PDF, otherwise, you could just scan images of each page) and on a typical "home" use flatbed scanner, you wouldn't always get the best results on every page. You'd probably spend ages formatting the pages and eventually you can stitch everything together with Adobe Acrobat (the full package, not Acrobat Reader) or another similar package.

Bottom line, it's incredibly tedious to do yourself and would take a lot of time and effort...

luckat

J-blk wrote: »

Bottom line, it's incredibly tedious to do yourself and would take a lot of time and effort...

Hmm.

conchubhar1

on the other hand - i have a printer that has an ocr scanner and image scanner (less than 100 euro in harvey normans)

the ocr creates a fully searchable and editable text file - so in effect once the work is done edits or corrections could be made

it takes about 10 secs to scan and about 20 secs to complete the upload to the pc - but the quality s amazing

but for a 200 page book it would take maybe 2 hours give or take

luckat

conchubhar1 wrote: »

it takes about 10 secs to scan and about 20 secs to complete the upload to the pc - but the quality s amazing

When you say PC do you mean a Windows machine?

luckat

And by the same token, my scanner (HP Scanjet 2400 - a very basic, cheap one) scans, but I don't know if it does OCR. Would I need to get special OCR software for it?

conchubhar1

i dunno about extra software


ye i have it hooked up to my pc mainly but it works on my macbook no bother in fact easier in some cases

thund3rbird_

what ever way you go about getting the pages (text or image) onto your mac, to get it in PDF format use any word processing app

when everything is together :

file > print > click the PDF button > save as PDF

luckat

Ahem (pardon thread creep) if spelling and punctuation don't matter, why do you want your Irish corrected?

drzhivago

luckat wrote: »

I'm giving a 1909 book to a museum, and I'd like to also give them a PDF of it, so people can read it rather than just looking at the cover in a case.

But how do I make a PDF of a book? Could anyone who's done it tell me, please?

very tedious

each page needs to be scanned individually, have had to do this for stuff that doesnt exist electronically by buying two copies and essentially destroying one to get pages similar size to get proper scans

If book is bound as you get towards the middle it will be difficult to scan the whole page and some of the page will not be on the scanner leading to significant artifact

The more tedious but accurate way to do this is a set up with a tripod, camera with good resolution and take a HI res photo of each page

Camera needs to be set to record as RAW initially. RAW files can be coverted to pdf

May have say 300 pdf pages, need Adobe acrobat then to make one document from all the single pages

Acrobat can also be used to character recognise the pages if that is what you desire as well

It will however be a big file in the end

luckat

drzhivago wrote: »

very tedious

each page needs to be scanned individually, have had to do this for stuff that doesnt exist electronically by buying two copies and essentially destroying one to get pages similar size to get proper scans

Ah, that's a pity, destroying this rare and valuable book isn't an option. Maybe it'll land on Google Books or Kindle at some stage.

conchubhar1

there is software out there that lets you change digital pictures from a camera into pdfs with searchable text

again quite tedious

if it is a 100 page book - to get it into a one file pdf that is searchable and full and clean

i would estimate it will take about 200 odd minutes at least

what is the book?
is it truly worth it? might it have other copies? might it be online already?

conchubhar1

luckat wrote: »

Ahem (pardon thread creep) if spelling and punctuation don't matter, why do you want your Irish corrected?

spelling for my irish, i see as important because i am doing a degree in it
punctuation i still pretty much ignore, for speed purposes and ease
:P

barochoc

If you don't want to stretch the book too far especially when you're close to the middle a DocuPen scanner might do the trick.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Planon-System-Solutions-DPENR700-Portable/dp/B0002W5QXW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1245976705&sr=8-1

Maybe the IRISPen will do the trick too.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/IRISPen-Express-Mac-PC-CD/dp/B000V9MD46/ref=pd_cp_ce_2

I don't think you have many other choices to be honest

minikin

We do a fair bit of this, everything bar the actual scanning (ocr and pdf compilation from a load of scans) is automated so doesn't take long. The most important part is to get good clean 600dpi scans to begin with.

I'd recommend farming it out to a print house if you don't have the time/knowledge yourself. Alternatively what about giving the book to the museum on the basis that they digitise it?