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Bargain-Price Book Scanner From A Cardboard Box.

by daniel_reetz on January 8, 2010

Table of Contents

Bargain-Price Book Scanner From A Cardboard Box. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Intro: Bargain-Price Book Scanner From A Cardboard Box. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Step 1: Reasons You Might Want To.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Step 2: Materials! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Step 3: How To Obtain Said Materials. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Step 4: CUT THE BOX MAN! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Step 5: WEDGES FOR FUN AND PROFIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Step 6: WEDGES PART II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Step 7: LIGHTING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Step 8: CAMERA SETUP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Step 9: SHOOT! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Step 10: Post Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Step 11: PDF creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Related Instructables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

http://www.instructables.com/id/Bargain-Price-Book-Scanner-From-A-Cardboard-Box/
 Author:daniel_reetz author's website
Hacker, Artist, Researcher, and founder of the diybookscanner.org community.

Intro: Bargain-Price Book Scanner From A Cardboard Box.

Who doesn't want access to their books, notebooks, magazines, class notes, and other stuff everywhere, all the time? The thing is that often these things are a pain to
scan. I have a really good solution for that, but it's expensive and can take a whole weekend to build. How do you scan a book, magazine or notebook when you have no
money, one camera, and just a little time? Matti and I show you how:

(PDF version here)

Step 1: Reasons You Might Want To....

BEFORE WE BEGIN... Reasons you might want to do this include the following:

1. You need to scan something, fast, but it doesn't scan easily.

2. You don't want to build an entire DIY Book Scanner.
3. You don't want to waste your time with a flatbed scanner.
4. You have only one camera.
5. You might not have a lot of tools or experience.
6. You want digital copies of your books or notebooks.

ALSO... We've done this book scanning Instructable thing before. And answered many questions in the comments! And we love you guys completely, but sometimes
(well, actually, all the time) we get the same questions over and over! So we've compiled a Fairly Annoying Questions (FAQ) Here are some answers before we get
started!

1. Why not just take a picture with the book on the table.

1. Why don't you. ;)

2. Your camera doesn't have enough resolution for two pages.
3. The distorted pages are not fun to read onscreen.
4. Lighting is inconsistent.
5. Cameras cast shadows. You cast shadows.

2. Why use a camera instead of a flatbed scanner?

1. Pressing a book on the scanner breaks the binding.

2. Flatbed scanners are slow.
3. You need to reposition the book for every page.
4. Flatbed scanners are slooooooow.
5. Sloooooooowwwwwnesssssss.

3. Why not use a sheet-feed scanner like the ScanSnap?

1. I don't like sawing the bindings off my books.

2. A small part of me dies when I destroy a book.
3. I don't have a tablesaw.
4. I'm not willing to spend ~$500 just to destroy a book.

4. Can't I use a webcam?

1. No.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Bargain-Price-Book-Scanner-From-A-Cardboard-Box/
Step 2: Materials!
OK, sorry about that. Now, let's get on to what you need.

YOU WILL NEED:

1. Book.
2. Box.
3. Knife.
4. Duct tape.
5. Pencil/Marker
6. Glass.
7. Lamp.
8. Tripod (not pictured)

Image Notes
1. DUCT TAPE
2. KNIFE
3. marker/pencil
4. book
5. GLASS!
6. Lovely, lovely lamp.
7. This, my friends, is a cardboard box.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Bargain-Price-Book-Scanner-From-A-Cardboard-Box/
Step 3: How To Obtain Said Materials.
Where to get boxes:

1. Dumpsters (we found great boxes from a comic book store).

2. Fast food places.
3. Grocery stores.
4. Bookstores.
5. Cardboard Recycling Dumpsters.
6. College campuses.

Where to get glass:

1. Hardware stores sell glass called "double strength". They cut it for you and it's cheap. $2 or $3 a sheet! Get one that's bigger than your book.
2. Rip apart your worthless, laggard flatbed scanner and take the glass out. That's what we did.

Where to get the tape, knife, pencil, lamp, tripod...? Well, we trust that you can find these on your own.

Step 4: CUT THE BOX MAN!

Find a box that is roughly this shape. We got this box from a comic book shop. It's nearly perfect. 7x14x10.5". Box size really isn't that critical but after cutting ~10 boxes
this one seemed to work best. Of course, you could make your own box.

Tape the box completely shut (we neglected to do this starting out; learn from our mistakes!)

Take your piece of glass and use it as a ruler to mark the diagonal line from corner to corner.

Cut across the diagonal.

Do the same thing on the other side.

If there are any remaining parts of the box hanging free, tape 'em up. If you taped your box completely shut at the beginning, you shouldn't have these kinds of problems.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Bargain-Price-Book-Scanner-From-A-Cardboard-Box/
 Image Notes Image Notes
1. THIS IS THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BOX, so the line is flipped! 1. Tape this side together so it looks like the other side. Actually, you only have to
do this if you didn't tape your box shut before starting. We didn't. Oops.

Image Notes
1. and how.

Step 5: WEDGES FOR FUN AND PROFIT

Unfold the box so you have two wedges.

Good job so far. Question: What are you scanning?

If the thing you are scanning is very thin, like a magazine or composition book or lab notebook, leave the two wedges connected. Same if it is a spiral-bound notebook.
These things all work well without further cutting. If the diagonal you cut across was not square, however, you might want to cut anyway. Like in our case, because the
angles weren't equal, we had to flip one of the wedges around.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Bargain-Price-Book-Scanner-From-A-Cardboard-Box/
 Image Notes
1. and how.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Bargain-Price-Book-Scanner-From-A-Cardboard-Box/
Step 6: WEDGES PART II
If the thing you are scanning is a book with a wide spine, you will definitely need to cut the two wedges apart. Remember to flip one around so they are facing opposite
each other.

Take one wedge, and tape it to the table, first on the inside edge, and then on the back edge.

Set the book between the two wedges. Move the remaining free wedge up against the spine of your book.

Remove the book.

Tape the wedge in place.

CONGRATULATIONS! You now have a handy book cradle that makes scanning easy and consistent.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Bargain-Price-Book-Scanner-From-A-Cardboard-Box/
Step 7: LIGHTING
OK, now for some lighting. You want your camera to be taking pictures nice and quick, so you need to give it plenty of light. We used a simple desk lamp. $3.99 at
Savers, a local thrift store. Though this is not the world's most even or perfect light, it is GOOD ENOUGH and, most importantly, the camera has a white balance setting
for it (called "Incandescent" -- set your WB to incandescent, PLZ!). Doing so ensures the colors come out perfectly. Consult the manual for your camera for instructions.

After you set up your camera in the next step, you may have to adjust your lamp because it will show up as a reflection in the glass. It's easy, just move it up or down to
get it out of the picture. But you can't do it until we set up the camera, so... let's set up the camera!

Step 8: CAMERA SETUP.

Here's the thing. You need a camera to look at your stuff and take pictures. And I guess you could hold it in your hands, but the shake, moving position, and so on would
reall complicate the post-processing of your images. What you need is a stand to put your camera on. We used a tripod, but of course you don't really need a tripod. In
fact, there are dozens of tripod-like objects on Instructables. If you don't have a tripod, check 'em out.

Ideally, you want your camera to be facing the page so that the screen on the back of the camera is parallel to the page. If things are straight-on, there is less correction
to do in software. It's worth playing around a bit to get your camera perfectly positioned. Once you have it set up, you might find, as we did, that it's ready to fall over! In
this case, tape the back leg of the tripod to your table.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Bargain-Price-Book-Scanner-From-A-Cardboard-Box/
Step 9: SHOOT!
This part is easy. From the previous step, you should have ensured that you have some slop aroud the image of the page you are interested. This allows you to crop
later, which is especially important if it is a thick book or magazine.

The way we prefer to do this is to shoot all the right-side pages first, and all the left-side pages second. Shooting all the pages this way simplifies post-processing later.

Below, you can see Matti shooting all the right-side pages of a book. He places the glass, presses the shutter button, replaces the glass, presses the shutter button... ad
nauseam. Do this until you have reached the end of whatever you are interested in scanning.

Then flip the book.

Continue as before, but now shooting all the left-side pages.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Bargain-Price-Book-Scanner-From-A-Cardboard-Box/
Step 10: Post Processing
There are two ways we can post-process these images before we make a PDF out of them:

The Lazy Way

Open up your favorite editor and rotate all of those images so they're the right way up :(

Or you can use some software Matti wrote to batch rotate them for you:

If you followed our instructions and took pictures of the right-hand side of the book all the way to the end, then flipped the book and took all the left-side pictures:

RotateAll.exe (Source code) will rotate the first half of the images clockwise, the second half counter-clockwise.

If you didn't use a tripod and instead took pictures of each page, alternating right then left, starting with the right-hand side of the book:

RotateEveryOther.exe (Source code) will rotate every other image clockwise, the remaining counter-clockwise.

To use these programs, just drag and drop a folder containing your images onto the .exe file of your choice, the program will automatically rotate your images and save
them as 00001.jpg, etc. in the same folder as your images.

Make sure the (alphabetically) first image (RotateEveryOther) or set of images (RotateAll) is/are the right-hand side page, otherwise your images will be rotated wrong...

If you follow this procedure, your resulting images will be something like this:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Bargain-Price-Book-Scanner-From-A-Cardboard-Box/
The Better Way
Over on the DIY Book Scanner forums, we prefer to use Scan tailor.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Bargain-Price-Book-Scanner-From-A-Cardboard-Box/
Scan Tailor was originally written by Joseph Artsimovich for processing scanned-in books from flatbed scanners; it does a wonderful job of automatically finding the
content of the pages and generally makes them look a lot better than the original camera shots.

Following our directions, your images will be out of order (all right-hand pages first, then all left-hand pages.) It'd be a pain to rename all of these so they were in the right
order, so Matti wrote a little utility to copy/rename all the images:

RenameAll.exe (Source code) copies and renames the first half of the images 000001-a.jpg, etc. then the second half 000001-b.jpg, etc.

To use this program, just drag and drop the folder containing your images onto the RenameAll.exe file, and the images will be copied and renamed into the same folder.

Using Scan Tailor

When you load up the Scan Tailor program, you'll want to create a new project, and then select the directory containing all of your images as the input directory, and
some other (empty) directory for your output directory.

When the "Fix DPI" window pops op, select All Pages, change the DPI to 300 x 300, hit Apply, then OK.

Now we're in the main window. On the right you'll see the task list:
Fix Orientation
Split Pages (optional)
Deskew (optional)
Select Content
Page Layout (optional)
Output

At the bare minimum, you need to fix the orientations of the images, select the content boxes, (skipping split pages and deskew) then output the processed images.

After rotating the on-screen image to the correct orientation, use the "Apply to..." button and select how you'd like to fix the other images in the project. Use "Apply to..."-
>"This page and the following ones" if your images are all right-hand pages, then all left-hand pages. Use "Apply to..."->"Every other page" if your images are sequential
pages.

In the "Select Content" tab, first hit the little arrow to automatically detect each page, then quickly scroll through each image to make sure the box is the right size in each
image.

Finally, select the "Output" tab, and deselect the "despeckle" option, and hit "Apply to.."->"Every page". Hit the little arrow, and Scan Tailor will save all the nice, crisp
output images to the output directory you specified.

Now you have all your pages ready to be turned into a PDF, or you could put the pictures into a zip file.

Your output will look something like this:

Image Notes Image Notes

1. The reason this is hard to read is not because the scanner is bad, but 1. The reason this is hard to read is not because the scanner is bad, but
because Instructables only allows images 500pixels wide. The actual output because Instructables only allows images 500pixels wide. The actual output
looks great. looks great.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Bargain-Price-Book-Scanner-From-A-Cardboard-Box/
Step 11: PDF creation
PDFcreator is one of many free programs that sets up a virtual "PDF printer" that makes it possible to print any document from any program to a pdf document.

After installing PDFcreator or any other virtual PDF printer, view the images in Windows Viewer (or any other application that'll let you print all the images at once) and
select the print button. You'll then be able to select all images and print them. Select the PDF printer and out pops a PDF file!

Good luck and Happy Scanning from myself and Matti Kariluoma!

http://www.instructables.com/id/Bargain-Price-Book-Scanner-From-A-Cardboard-Box/
Related Instructables

Weekly Project:
A Handheld 3-D
Blue Velvet Camera:
DIY High-Speed cover for you e- Self-publishing Duck/duct tape How to Put Your Without Using a
Book Scanner book reader by An iPhone App Folder Book Instructables E- Camera by PSdp
from Trash and mikolynn ebook by Noble Pocket by Books On Your
Cheap Cameras Smith Fodaro iPad by frenzy
by daniel_reetz

Comments
38 comments Add Comment

monkban says: Nov 10, 2010. 5:59 AM REPLY

So what do you do with a paperback book you want to copy that does not open up nicely as hardback books do? Meaning -- if I put a new paperback book in
the box-wedge and open to the page I want to copy, the book simply closes. Any thoughts? Thanks.

monkban says: Feb 26, 2011. 5:00 PM REPLY

Wondering if anyone had any thoughts yet on how to handle a paperback book with the problems described in my first post (above) about book not lying
flat. Thanks!

fire bat says: Feb 11, 2011. 8:03 AM REPLY

This is an amazing prodject. i was in a bind (no pun here) the other day. my backpack literally broke under the weight of my engineering texts. i built this in
10 mins, and now all i bring to class is a laptop and a note book. you guys are a life saver. 5 stars here!

daniel_reetz says: Feb 11, 2011. 8:07 AM REPLY

Awesome. If you ever get a chance, drop by DIYBookScanner.org and share a picture of your setup!

robbtoberfest says: Jan 21, 2011. 1:23 PM REPLY

I started this today, (great instructable) and have some questions. How do you consolidate all the separate pdf pages into a "book" to load to the ereader? Is
there another program to make a large pdf or epub file? I haven't bought an ereader yet, but plan to soon. I have a 1200 page vegetation ID reference book,
plus a few others that I'd like to convert so I can lighten my backpack.

daniel_reetz says: Jan 21, 2011. 3:25 PM REPLY

Robbtoberfest, you should really join us over at DIYBookScanner.org. In particular, check out the "software" forum and the "new standard scanner" build
thread to see some modern improvements. This instructable, though great, is outdated and we have lot of improvements over on the forums.

robbtoberfest says: Jan 21, 2011. 7:20 PM REPLY

Will do, thanks much.

Need2Relax says: Oct 12, 2010. 8:50 AM REPLY

Mac Users can do the same "print to PDF" thing, but it is already built into the Mac OS X. View all those images in any application, then print. Note the "PDF"
button at the lower left corner of the print dialog box, and use it to print to a PDF file instead of whatever printer is selected.

synthetase says: Jan 11, 2011. 9:41 PM REPLY

10.6 and possibly 10.5 allows you to create multi-page pdfs simply by copying all the files in finder and pasting them in preview.

daniel_reetz says: Nov 14, 2010. 2:52 PM REPLY

Thanks for the tips!

wnnorton says: Dec 27, 2010. 4:00 PM REPLY

Some cameras have the ability to "lock" the focus and exposure settings, allowing a much quicker recovery and re-shoot. With a static setup such as this, it
should prove quite useful.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Bargain-Price-Book-Scanner-From-A-Cardboard-Box/
 bluefly1215 says: Dec 3, 2010. 2:37 AM REPLY
Very nice, this would work great with old books that are falling apart. It also would come in handy for keeping a documented copy of important items such as
genealogy, baby books, scrapbook pages, wills... I could go on but I think you get the idea. I have taken photo's and made them into phish, not fun with old
books, some over 100 years old. This gives the book some support without cracking the old spine and the camera is parallel to the page.

CyborgGold says: Sep 22, 2010. 12:29 AM REPLY

Um... correct me if I am wrong.... but I believe a camera should be on the things needed list... just saying ;) Maybe you know some magic trick that I have yet
to learn :P

daniel_reetz says: Nov 14, 2010. 2:52 PM REPLY

Good point, we thought it was implied. I'll change it someday.

D00M99 says: Oct 15, 2010. 11:43 PM REPLY

I may or may not do this project, but one thing is for sure;
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE PROGRAMS!!!!!!

daniel_reetz says: Oct 16, 2010. 12:13 AM REPLY

You're welcome! Matti did most of the work for the small programs, and Scan Tailor was done by Joseph Artsimovich. I am just the camera/scanner guy.
:)

Need2Relax says: Oct 12, 2010. 8:48 AM REPLY

Mac users can use the shareware GraphicConverter. If you pay the shareware fee that unlocks batch processing.Opens almost any format of graphic, and
saves in almost any graphic format. Also great for cropping & adjusting. The batch processing is a wonderful thing.

ezuk says: Sep 19, 2010. 12:39 AM REPLY

This is a _superb_ 'ible. There aren't many ebooks in my language, and being able to convert my own books (that I've bought and paid for) to read on my e-
reader is _awesome_. Thank you so much!

daniel_reetz says: Sep 19, 2010. 1:07 AM REPLY

You're very welcome. Feel free to join us at the DIY Book Scanner forum if you run into any trouble along the way.

browsercat says: Sep 17, 2010. 6:29 PM REPLY

Totally cool...I've got all the raw materials for this. I agree with you totally about banging up books, and sometimes, magazines, depending on how they are
bound, are just as much a problem [think National Geographics and the like] to scan.

daniel_reetz says: Sep 18, 2010. 2:44 AM REPLY

Awesome. Looking forward to seeing your results... and all your questions are probably answered over at diybookscanner.org. :)

adeolatigerboy says: May 29, 2010. 7:30 AM REPLY

My younger one has a project like this in mind. He wants to build a portable scanner in a box. To do that the camera has to be situated in the box. Is this
possible with the steps above.

JJJM says: May 4, 2010. 3:09 AM REPLY

Hello, I am just giving my first steps into scanning books and this has been very helpful, specially the Q&A section at the beginning.

My goal is not only to have a pdf but a text document which is more useful for ereaders. So far, with my short experience I have two questions for you:

* Do you get good pdf quality which can be converted into text witha high success rate?

* In my opinion lighting is one of the keys? How could we improve it to have a better scanning? Fluorescent or halogen do any better?

Thanks again.

mguima says: Mar 29, 2010. 5:50 PM REPLY

Freeware Irfanview has plenty of features to process several pages: cropping, rotating, color enhancing (auto or user-defined),resolution changing, etc.

mguima says: Mar 29, 2010. 5:44 PM REPLY

I would give a try to a CFL (compact fluorescent lamp), instead of the incandescent one.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Bargain-Price-Book-Scanner-From-A-Cardboard-Box/
 maxwellparish says: Jan 18, 2010. 10:28 PM REPLY
I've been having an issue running the RenameAll.exe file. It will consistently lock up after ~90 images and Windows will close the program. Is anyone else
having this issue or can see the issue in the code? Thanks.

mattikariluoma says: Jan 19, 2010. 11:38 AM REPLY

Turns out it was easy to hunt down; my first shot at fixing it was trying to free() the next image from memory, problem was the next image hadn't even
been loaded yet. Also I wanted to free() the current image. It's all fixed now.

The links in the instructable now point to the new binaries and source code.

maxwellparish says: Jan 19, 2010. 12:06 PM REPLY

Awesome! Thanks for fixing it!

mattikariluoma says: Jan 19, 2010. 8:30 AM REPLY

Yeah, I noticed it last night while I was trying do do a 260-pager.

It's a nasty memory leak I've been trying to hunt down; a very stupid way to get around it would be to make a bunch of ~60 sized subfolders with half
right/half left and do them in chunks.

You see, we did our testing on a 20-page test data-set...

I'll update the code/ instructable in the coming week with improved stuff.

daniel_reetz says: Jan 19, 2010. 4:23 AM REPLY

Hey maxwellparish, I'll forward this on to Matti.

If you're in a hurrry, BulkRenameUtility is another good general purpose renamer. But we will get RenameAll working.

Chromatica says: Jan 10, 2010. 8:19 AM REPLY

Cool.

Chromatica says: Jan 10, 2010. 8:25 AM REPLY

Too bad theirs no way to do this in Vector format. Only roster.

Doctor What says: Jan 9, 2010. 1:26 PM REPLY

I loved your first scanning instructable, but it seemed too complex to be able to do in one's house, unless they had a large dedicated space.

This seems way easier, and I love the idea.

EXCEPT: Your final images were slightly.... umm.... illegible. Was this an error in the uploading to the site, or do they actually look like that afterwards?

daniel_reetz says: Jan 9, 2010. 1:46 PM REPLY

I just put some notes on those images to prevent any further confusion about image quality.

Thanks for the kudos... hope this leads even more people to start scanning their own stuff....

lemonie says: Jan 10, 2010. 4:44 AM REPLY

You can upload bigger images than those - was the site reporting a specific error?

Chromatica says: Jan 10, 2010. 8:24 AM REPLY

I think he's talking about the quality decrease.

Doctor What says: Jan 9, 2010. 3:15 PM REPLY

Thanks for clearing things up. I am going to try this now! (my textbooks would be much easier to carry in digital format).

daniel_reetz says: Jan 9, 2010. 3:59 PM REPLY

Good luck and please report back with how it turns out. We're also talking about it here. I think you'll find Scan Tailor does a great job with books
that are mostly text.

The other thing I think you'll find is that you'll want to zoom in on your books much closer than our little camera image in step 8 might suggest.

Finally, I think this is going to work best on books that are thinner than the one we used (it's over 2" thick). The thing that you'll notice is that the
pages "move away" from the camera as you travel through the thickness of the book. That is what the sliding cradle in the original instructable
solved. But this is all minor stuff. Cheers and again, best of luck to you.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Bargain-Price-Book-Scanner-From-A-Cardboard-Box/
http://www.instructables.com/id/Bargain-Price-Book-Scanner-From-A-Cardboard-Box/