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halfgaar
l33t
Joined: 22 Feb 2004
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Location: Netherlands
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 Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 2:44 pm Post subject: Photocopy software |
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Hi,
I'm looking for a program with which I can easily scan documents and save them to DjVu files. I use The GIMP (saving as PNG) for it now, but I have to do a lot of manual work, like changing the color levels each time, to avoid white becoming grey (which makes the file big and results in ugly printing of the scan), and I have to scale it down after a 300 DPI scan, because otherwise the file would be too big.
It would be convenient to have a tool which acts like a virtual photocopier, which can save as DjVu, and also support printing. Does anyone know of such a tool?
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timeBandit
Bodhisattva
Joined: 31 Dec 2004
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Location: here, there or in transit
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| Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 3:31 pm Post subject: |
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I'm not familiar with DjVu so I can't help there. I believe VueScan would meet the rest of your needs. It supports auto-white-balancing and tons of advanced features, and saves files in JPEG, raw and several TIFF formats. In particular for copier-style use, it also can create text or multi-page PDF files--it incorporates the best OCR I've used on Linux, bar none. (Caveat: I can't recall if PDF is OCR'ed or saved as images.)
Besides film and photo scanning, I routinely scan documents, receipts and such and archive them as 150-300DPI, 1-bit (B&W) TIFFs. This converts to pure whites and blacks at very compact file sizes. (If you prefer to avoid TIFF you can run them through ImageMagick or GIMP to convert to PNG.) You can save and load configuration profiles for common workflows/tasks, and IIRC you can configure it for one-click scan-(and-save-)and-print operation, to act as a photocopier.
Though it is commercial software, it is reasonably priced and--most importantly--you can try it before you buy. It is actively developed and supported by the author, fully supported on Linux (despite its lack of prominence on the website) and simply an outstanding program.
Since that reads a lot like an advertisement, I'll provide the standard disclaimer that I'm not affiliated with Hamrick in any way, I'm merely a satisfied customer. 
Edit: I googled DjVu and do recall hearing of (and quite forgetting about) it previously...the UNIX/Linux versions of the DjVu tools appear to include a TIFF converter.
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halfgaar
l33t
Joined: 22 Feb 2004
Posts: 781
Location: Netherlands
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| Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:51 pm Post subject: |
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Hmm. I hope the only program for this is not a commercial one. I don't really like commercial programs. Not only because I don't like paying for them, but also because commercial Linux programs often manage to look and feel like they come from the 1970s.
Since you use the program, do you have an e-build for the trial? Another thing I don't like, is installing software on my machine without portage.
BTW The website says it supports more than 700 scanners. What business does a program have with supporting scanners? It merely needs to talk to Sane. Or, is this a symptom of feeling like a 1970s program; of which one flaw is failure to use common libraries...
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timeBandit
Bodhisattva
Joined: 31 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 8:30 pm Post subject: |
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| halfgaar wrote: | | I don't really like commercial programs. Not only because I don't like paying for them, but also because commercial Linux programs often manage to look and feel like they come from the 1970s. |
I fully understand. You might be pleasantly surprised--it's a GTK+-2 application and not unattractive. Notice I didn't say "attractive," but that's only because it's functional not flashy.
| halfgaar wrote: | | Since you use the program, do you have an e-build for the trial? Another thing I don't like, is installing software on my machine without portage. |
No, but I'm due for an update anyway so I'll throw one together for you tonight and use the update to test it. I've had this on the to-do list for a while anyway....
| halfgaar wrote: | | BTW The website says it supports more than 700 scanners. What business does a program have with supporting scanners? It merely needs to talk to Sane. Or, is this a symptom of feeling like a 1970s program; of which one flaw is failure to use common libraries... |
At the time I discovered it, VueScan was literally years ahead of SANE in device support and capability (in particular, SANE didn't support my scanner at all). SANE was pretty dreadful for a while, a few years back...maybe that's why the author chose to ignore it. Honestly I don't know.
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halfgaar
l33t
Joined: 22 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 9:18 pm Post subject: |
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I gave the trial a short go. I didn't test is thoroughly, but it seems OK. But it being commercial didn't motivate me to test further... If you do make an e-build, don't make it just for me. However, if you make one for yourself however, I would be interested in it.
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FishB8
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Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 2:54 am Post subject: |
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Why not use Xsane?
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halfgaar
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Joined: 22 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 10:16 am Post subject: |
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That's what I use now, called from The GIMP, and it's clumsy. First you have to scan (at 300 DPI). Then you have to adjust the white balance so that the white background becomes white. Then you have to scale. Then you have to index it to a number of colors. And then you have to save it to a file. For one scan it doesn't really matter, but I need something with which I can do these things automatically, preferably including an archive function as well, because I don't like manual labor.
I would guess Canon (the manufacturer of my scanner) has such software, because the buttons on the scanner ("scan", "copy" and "e-mail") are meant to facilitate just that.
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twstd3bc
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Joined: 07 Feb 2003
Posts: 289
Location: Los Angeles, USA
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| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 11:33 am Post subject: |
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| halfgaar wrote: | That's what I use now, called from The GIMP, and it's clumsy. First you have to scan (at 300 DPI). Then you have to adjust the white balance so that the white background becomes white. Then you have to scale. Then you have to index it to a number of colors. And then you have to save it to a file. For one scan it doesn't really matter, but I need something with which I can do these things automatically, preferably including an archive function as well, because I don't like manual labor.
I would guess Canon (the manufacturer of my scanner) has such software, because the buttons on the scanner ("scan", "copy" and "e-mail") are meant to facilitate just that. |
Here's what I've been doing for the last couple of years. I have an HP 4215 all in one (with ADF), so I
1. Scan with 'scanimage -d --mode Grayscale --resolution 300 -x 8.5in -y 11in --batch=name%02d.pgm'
2. Convert everything to djvu like this: 'for i in name*pgm; do c44 $i; done'
3. Then convert all the pages into one DJVU document with 'djvm -c name.djvu name*djvu'
I've been thinking of putting all of that in a script, but it's so fast, I never bothered. I write anywhere from 2-10 pages of notes everyday, and scan them all at the end of the day. If you want to scan in color, then exclude the '--mode Grayscale' and use ppm instead of pgm for the file extension. |
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twstd3bc
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Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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Location: Los Angeles, USA
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| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 11:35 am Post subject: |
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| Oh yeah, c44 and djvm are from the DJVU package, and scanimage is from XSANE. |
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halfgaar
l33t
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| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 11:40 am Post subject: |
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What about automatic white balance? When copying something with a photocopier, it usually leaves white as white, but when I scan something, I manually have to change it with the GIMP so that it doesn't have a gray background. It would be nice if it would do it automatically.
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twstd3bc
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Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 5:49 pm Post subject: |
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| halfgaar wrote: | | What about automatic white balance? When copying something with a photocopier, it usually leaves white as white, but when I scan something, I manually have to change it with the GIMP so that it doesn't have a gray background. It would be nice if it would do it automatically. |
Use 'scamimage --mode Lineart' and save to .pbm instead of .pgm. You may have to increase the dpi for screen viewing depending on your tastes However, at 300 dpi the djvu printout I just did is highly acceptable (which is a pleasant surprise). |
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twstd3bc
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| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 6:00 pm Post subject: |
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| twstd3bc wrote: | | halfgaar wrote: | | What about automatic white balance? When copying something with a photocopier, it usually leaves white as white, but when I scan something, I manually have to change it with the GIMP so that it doesn't have a gray background. It would be nice if it would do it automatically. |
Use 'scamimage --mode Lineart' and save to .pbm instead of .pgm. You may have to increase the dpi for screen viewing depending on your tastes However, at 300 dpi the djvu printout I just did is highly acceptable (which is a pleasant surprise). |
Looks like on my computer, at least, you have to add an extra step. c44 doesn't understand the file generated by scanimage's lineart mode, so one trick I used was convert (from Imagemagick); e.g., 'convert name01.pgm newname01.pgm' gives an acceptable file for c44. Also, you must use .pgm extensions throughout (instead of .pbm) for c44 to understand. The results are identical. |
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halfgaar
l33t
Joined: 22 Feb 2004
Posts: 781
Location: Netherlands
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| Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2007 7:26 pm Post subject: |
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OK, I finally put some work in this. I wrote a script to quickly make lineart scans:
| Code: | #! /bin/bash
# Author: halfgaar
# Prevent attacker from placing unholy replacements of system commands in your
# working path.
PATH="/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/bin"
# User settings
RESOLUTION="400"
SCANNER_DEVICE="plustek"
OUTPUT_FILE_BASENAME=$1
OUTPUT_FILE="$OUTPUT_FILE_BASENAME.djvu"
TEMP_FILE="/tmp/halfgaars_scanned_image"
[ ! -n "$OUTPUT_FILE_BASENAME" ] && echo "No filename given" && exit 1
if [ -e "$TEMP_FILE" ]; then
echo "Temp file $TEMP_FILE already exists. We don't want to create a symlink vulnerability here..."
exit 1
fi
if [ -e "$OUTPUT_FILE" ]; then
echo "$OUTPUT_FILE already exists."
exit 1
fi
# page dimensions are in mm
scanimage -d $SCANNER_DEVICE -x 210 -y 297 --mode lineart --resolution $RESOLUTION > $TEMP_FILE
cjb2 -dpi $RESOLUTION $TEMP_FILE $OUTPUT_FILE
rm $TEMP_FILE |
I used cjb2 instead of c44, as it's meant for lineart graphics. It also removes the necessity to convert a pbm image to pgm, as cjb2 only accepts pbm. And because I don't have a document feeder, there's no need to convert the pages into one doc.
BTW, I demand the world used djvu cbj2 for this, instead of PDF (as most people do), as this is quite cool 
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ahubu
Guru
Joined: 16 Aug 2003
Posts: 400
Location: Groningen, The Netherlands
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| Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 2:43 pm Post subject: |
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Really interesting, I never heard of djvu before. I'll try this and the script. I had something similar for scanning B/W pages and converting to PDF (as image) . Hopefully this will make the resulting files somewhat smaller. Thanks!
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halfgaar
l33t
Joined: 22 Feb 2004
Posts: 781
Location: Netherlands
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| Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 3:27 pm Post subject: |
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Bare in mind that the scanned image is lineart, not grayscale. I had a quick go at automatic color/grayscale scanning, also saving as djvu, but because of the lack of automatic white balancing, the file was too big. Lineart is good enough for me, for scanning bills and invoices and stuff, so I haven't spent any time trying to improve it.
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twstd3bc
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Joined: 07 Feb 2003
Posts: 289
Location: Los Angeles, USA
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| Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2007 4:37 pm Post subject: |
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| twstd3bc wrote: | | twstd3bc wrote: | | halfgaar wrote: | | What about automatic white balance? When copying something with a photocopier, it usually leaves white as white, but when I scan something, I manually have to change it with the GIMP so that it doesn't have a gray background. It would be nice if it would do it automatically. |
Use 'scamimage --mode Lineart' and save to .pbm instead of .pgm. You may have to increase the dpi for screen viewing depending on your tastes However, at 300 dpi the djvu printout I just did is highly acceptable (which is a pleasant surprise). |
Looks like on my computer, at least, you have to add an extra step. c44 doesn't understand the file generated by scanimage's lineart mode, so one trick I used was convert (from Imagemagick); e.g., 'convert name01.pgm newname01.pgm' gives an acceptable file for c44. Also, you must use .pgm extensions throughout (instead of .pbm) for c44 to understand. The results are identical. |
I made a mistake above. The extra step isn't needed. C44 doesn't understand PBM, but using CJB2 instead, as Halfgaar notes, works just fine. |
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halfgaar
l33t
Joined: 22 Feb 2004
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Location: Netherlands
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| Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2007 9:28 pm Post subject: |
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By now, I do have the need for something that scans in greyscale and does proper white balancing, so that the file can be properly compressed. I need to look into that...
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