what gives a clear scan with Linux?

[Brian Cluff]

I've always like xsane, btw SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) is the 
drivers that pretty much everything in Linux uses for it's backend, most 
frontend programs just show less options in order to make scanning easy 
and can hide increasing the resolution of the image.

XSANE exposes the maximum amount of options, but that also makes it more 
difficult to use.  It does have some really nice options that aren't 
found in many other programs like being able to set zones on your 
scanner so that you can scan multiple images or pages at once and xsane 
will automatically chop them up into seperate images for you.  That 
makes bulk scanning much faster.

One other thing you might want to try if you are bulk scanning books is 
to just use a digital camera.  A digital camera can take pictures of the 
pages as fast as you can turn the page and most cameras these days have 
enough DPI that that you will have no problem reading them later.

To increase the quality of the photo, find a piece of glass.  I ended up 
temporarily robbing one from a picture frame.  Then use the glass to 
press the pages flat for the camera.  You'll also want a light or 2 to 
get good results.  Make sure that you light the book from the sides and 
not try to get it straight on or you'll get a ton of glare.

Once you are done, there are some utilities that can increase the 
quality of your scanned or photographed images.  Unpaper is one that 
comes to mind.  It can help make the image look even more flat, 
especially towards the spine of the book.

Brian Cluff

On 12/22/2015 11:10 AM, Michael Havens wrote:
> I've been using gscan2pdf for a long time. I have been considering the
> poor resolution as the breaks of the game. I recently resolved to try to
> fix it because I was scanning my computer manuals in. I fiddled with
> some stuff but no improvement. I then thought it might be gscan2pdf so I
> started another scanner. I picked SANE and while the scan was much
> slower the resolution was not much better (I 'm sure the program isn't
> called SANE but whenever I try to open a scanner program now I am told
> "Sorry. No devices found." The second program I used is found by
> clicking "Acquireimages"). So I thought it was a scanner issue or a
> computer issue; so I shut Linux down and started Windows. Well, with the
> Windows7 included scanner program the scan was slower than with
> gscan2pdf (default settings) but not slower than with SANE and the image
> was clear. In fact I was able to zoom in 200% and while it was not
> crystal clear it was very much legible while a Linux zoom of 100%
> produced a practically illegible document.
>
> --
> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>