Apples

Apples

by Garik

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I use PENTAX Optio RS1500 Hoya Corp. digital camera with 14 megapixels.

When I photograph a huge book on a table, I can use text mode to capture all the text and lines clearly. But the lines become not straight, because it's hard to press the book to be totally level like just one paper.

How can I photograph the book so that the lines are straight, or how can I use image editors (e.g. gimp, photoshop...) to adjust the image to a straight line table?

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By "huge" do you mean a book with large pages (how large?) or a very thick one? Did you consider copying the tables with a copying machine? It is easier to press the open book to the glass. – ysap Dec 14 '11 at 0:54
huge means about 1000 pages(thick). I have tried to use scanner,but I found the page will still unlevel. – sam Dec 14 '11 at 2:58

3 Answers

up vote 4 down vote

Things that will help. There will be more than this but this should be a good start:

  • Sheet of glass of reasonable weight on top of book to level surface

  • Lighting at suitable angle and diffuse so reflections do not show.

  • Longer focal length with camera furthr away - less "paralllax".
    This is not a problem when an image has no front-back depth - which a page usually hasn't. When the surface curves so it has 'depth' in the z direction this can happen.

  • Small aperture (high f number) to get good depth of field relative to height variations

  • Lens correction is software if available for your lens and camera (eg DXO optics and no doubt various others.)

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up vote 2 down vote

I think you are looking for something like unpaper. The cam scanner app on android works pretty well too.

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Is any software can read jpg not pbm? Or how to fix some background are cutted to white block in pgm and ppm files? – sam Dec 15 '11 at 3:56
you can use imagemagick to convert jpg to ppm file.. scanimage can directly scan to ppm I think. – Sridhar Iyer Dec 15 '11 at 8:31
I have tried to convert and I also said those format will cause a lot of information losing of picture when running unpaper. So I want to find another software to do that. – sam Dec 15 '11 at 9:40
up vote 2 down vote

Several suggestions:

  • Take a look at DIY Book Scanner
  • Also, you might be interested in BookDrive DIY
  • A similar suggestion to that of @Sridhar Iyer: Try Scan Tailor. It really rocks! Be sure to watch the tutorials before using it (I think you can find them on youtube).
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