Thanks to those whom commented. I like the idea of being able to have someone else spend time on scanning manuals instead of me for a little money. However, it's also good to know how to do it myself when I have only one or two items as a time.
One of these days I hope to see a manual library on a website... I will certainly offer all the manuals in PDF that I have. ~Benjamin, KB9LFZ On Fri, 2010-02-19 at 12:24 -0800, Eric Lemmon wrote: > > 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 > > > > >
