When searching for the best book scanning software, your choices might seem limited at first.
You might think that you need a special book scanner software to scan pages, or that you might have compatibility issues between your device and other software available on the market.
What if we told you that there is a better way to approach this. In fact, we will propose a solution that does not require special scanner compatibility and you don’t even have to install it on your pc. Just upload your batches and process them accordingly.
Do I really need a book scanner software?
Just as with most devices today, a book scanner is useless without good software. We will focus a bit more today on batch image processing rather than the operating software of a scanner.
Most software for such devices is developed with scanner control in mind and not in delivering the highest image scan quality on the market. Probably because manufacturers are more concerned about delivering functional equipment and concentrate less on the output quality. That is usually a scanning provider issue and only when working in actual scanning projects you start focusing on these aspects.
Another thing is the optical character recognition, OCR as some call it. This is a special tool that takes the image and applies a text recognition procedure, in which it detects automatically the characters, numbers and also other symbols that are present on that page.
So the answer is yes, you definitely need an alternative book scanning software, as providers don’t always tailor the software to your specific needs. Also, the file format that will be outputted can suffer with standard software.
Features a good book scanning software should have
Most book scanning solutions or devices built for cultural heritage digitization feature a high quality capturing unit. These machines won’t scan pages as quickly as an automatic document feeder scanner would, but they can achieve book digitization at a superior scan quality.
A good software enhances the quality of the scanning, achieving results that are closer to your original documents, sometimes even improving them.
Some of the features that should be included are the following:
- Smart Cropping, Deskew, and Edge Cleaning – These features are the starting point for your image processing. They will take a scanned page, adjust the size accordingly, straighten the image and correct the edges.
- Background Cleaning, White Balance and Special Text – Now we get more advanced. Background cleaning homogenizes the background and adjusts it to a constant level over the entire surface. White balance will try and adjust color levels in an unbalanced image. The special text feature will sharpen the text without affecting the images on your page.
- Color, Grayscale and Bitonal Conversion – Even if it might sound simple, converting images from color to grayscale or bitonal requires a bit of work. You have to make sure you have adjusted levels accordingly, or the end result might be disastrous. And the performance of your OCR software will also be affected.
- Other special features regarding resolution, page size and fitting the content in a new page in case of reprinting and also outputting the correct file format.
Smart Cropping
The smart or automatic cropping feature searches for specific points in your images and cuts the image to reproduce the original document size. It can be used for overhead scanners and flatbed scanners alike.
It does not matter what kind of document scan. Paper documents, books, magazines, even office paper can be handled with this feature.
Some OCR technology will have this feature enabled and it will do it in the background, during the text recognition process.
Deskew and Edge Cleaning
Depending on the scan mode you are using, you might have this feature on or off. Sometimes for nondestructive scanning, you will adjust the book and the end results will come out misaligned.
To correct this in both a document and book, the procedure will search for patterns in the image to detect the correct alignment of the text. Based on that, it will apply a correction.
When the angle is not a very acute one, it will also correct the margins automatically, if in the correct scan mode. It enhances the quality overall, but it also improves the optical character recognition OCR.
Color, Grayscale and Bitonal Conversion
This operation might seem pretty straightforward, but it is very important, especially when considering fine details in the scanned images.
The first application for our feature would be for technical drawings and other sketches that some users will scan. Especially for large format ones, when you scan in color, the resulted file will be quite big.
That is why, some users tend to have grayscale or even bitonal conversions of these files for easier transfer.
For normal books, especially for manuscripts, most details written with pencil or in gray shades tend to dissapear when you make the color conversion.
Our software uses an AI procedure that analyzes the pattern of the image and then chooses the optimal binarization procedure. We have developed this feature in a project where we had to convert tenths of millions of pages that could not be analyzed image by image.
Other special features
One of the features we use the most for books is the page centering feature. As you probably know, most physical books have a layout that is only suited for physical printing.
If you convert directly to an ebook, the text block will move left and right as you go through the pages. While this is annoying to say the least, the biggest problem is that it will hurt your eyes and get you tired quickly. That is why, for each page we scan, we take the text block and insert it centered into a new page.
This new layout is much better for reading, your eyes and you won’t be as tired when you do finish reading. We have really good feedback from customers for this solution and we tend to use it quite often these days.
Frequently asked questions
We will try and make a list of the most frequent questions we get from our customers. If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact us directly.
What is a scanning software?
Scanning software like the OVS BOOK Scanning Software are designed to take scanned images and prepare them to be delivered in a digital file format. This process includes the retrieval of the image from the scanner, cleaning procedures which improve the visual quality of the pages and last but not least the delivery in the desired file format, which in most cases is a PDF file.
What is the best scanning software?
The best scanning software which you can use at the moment, especially for bound documents is the OVS BOOK Scanning Software. Our solution has been developed specifically for the needs of our book scanning facilities which processes hundreds of thousands of book pages each month. This solution has been tailor made for real life needs when it comes to mass digitization of documents and books.
What is the best software to edit scanned documents?
The OVS BOOK scanning software is designed to handle a vast majority of scanned images. It can handle standard documents, large format documents, book pages and even other non standardized formats such as manuscripts. We think that the software provides enough versatility to handle just about any demand when it comes to document scanning and processing.
What is the use of OCR?
OCR or optical character recognition is an integral part of any document scanning process. In this step of the digitization process, scanned images are analyzed and converted to digital file formats which include the recognition of the text. This means you will be able copy text, edit and even modify paper documents that have been scanned.
How do I convert a PDF to ebook?
After scanning the books, our software will analyze each page separately, determine the layout of the text and then integrate the text block into the new page. This is a critical step when converting your PDF for ebook formats, because it will give it a clean and fresh look, which will make it easier for your customers to read the ebook.
