Benjamin, There is no need to mosaic anything. The key is to use a commercial scanner that has a throat of at least 48", so that long foldout sheets can be scanned in one pass directly into PDF. Such machines are very expensive, and would normally be found only at a commercial graphics house. It is not a good idea to scan long pages into segments that later must be taped or somehow pieced together. Mention has been made of "stitching" the pieces back together using special software, but this is unnecessary if the original had been scanned in one piece. Besides, I have never found such software to be either 100% effective or reasonably priced. The free Adobe Reader package includes a great feature, called the "SnapShot Tool." Depending upon the Reader version, this may appear on the toolbar as a camera inside of a box, or it may be in the Tools drop-down menu. If all you want is a portion of a long foldout schematic, simply select that portion with the SnapShot Tool cursor, and it will be copied to your Clipboard. You can then print out that detail on a standard page printer.
Another issue is that a line drawing, such as a schematic diagram, should be scanned directly into PDF to maintain high quality and a reasonable size. Image formats such as GIF, TIFF, and JPEG are great for color pictures but are not appropriate for line drawings. When an image has but two bits, either 0 or 1, it is a huge waste of file space to scan it as if it had 16,000,000 colors. Adobe Acrobat Professional software includes drivers that seamlessly interface with commercial scanners. When scanning pages directly into PDF, use the line drawing setting unless the 8-bit gray scale setting is needed for photographs or PCB layouts. Above all, do not scan any black-and-white images as color images. Finally, all pages should be oriented as 11 inches high, regardless of viewing aspect. This will permit the PDF to be printed on a commercial roll printer, reproducing the original in exactly the same size and format as the hard copy that was scanned. Unless every page of a manual is 8.5 by 11 inches, take it to a commercial graphics house for a professional scanning job. 73, Eric Lemmon WB6FLY -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Benjamin L. Naber Sent: Friday, February 19, 2010 11:39 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Repeater-Builder] manual and service manual scanning (digitize to PDF) For those whom are scanning manuals, what program is used to mosaic the larger foldouts into one 'page'? If someone says GIMP, then I'm game! I have several manuals that will be copied and then probably recycled, so I'd like to know what folks are doing... ~Benjamin, KB9LFZ
