Creating A .PDF

mdshunk

Without owning full Adobe....

How do I create a .PDF scan of a book? I have a certain book that I want to scan in, but I want the completed .PDF document to be mostly an OCR scan so that text sections can have the "cut and paste" ability. I have already taken the book to a local bookbinder and had the binding "straight knifed" off, so that I have the individual pages to scan in really nice and flat. Now, I just need to know what the next step is to get it scanned in and turned into a .PDF.

MinConst

google this
scan to pdf freeware

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ProWallGuy

MD, I use CutePDF Writer. Google it, its free, and works well.

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KentWhitten

CutePDF is a very good free pdf writer. Now also, if you have 30 days, you can download the acrobat trial version and it's fully capable for the 30 days. Not sure how big the book is you got there.

edit:actually, I'm not sure you can print and save with the trial version. There are quite a few out there that are free though.

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BuiltByMAC

If you have a Mac, you can scan your image (in Photoshop or similar) and click
File - Print

In the print dialog box, choose Save as PDF. It will create a pdf file from the scan.

There might be an option like that for PCs, I just know nothing about them.

Mac

mickeyco

Is the text mixed with pictures? I don't know what type of scanner you have and what software it came with but I have a HP and it came with software (HP Imaging Director) and it will scan and do OCR (most scanners come with some form of an OCR software, sometimes it's hard to find, you have to select scan "document" in HP. It will scan a page and turn into a Microsoft Word document, it will do pages with pictures as well. The problem with most OCR is there will always be a few errors that need correcting and it can be quite time consuming if it's a lot of pages. There's quite a few products that will do it but they're not to cheap, I think Acrobat does OCR (not sure) and Abbyy has a few applications I've used with good results ( http://www.abbyy.com/finereader_ocr/ ).

The way I usually do it, provided your scanner has OCR software, is scan the document to Word, do any editing and then print to pdf with a freeware pdf writer ( I use Acrobat).

Thought of one more idea, if you work in office buildings many of them have a "photo copier" that copies documents with OCR directly into pdf's (really fast, my girlfriend has one at work), you might try asking someone there if they would do it for you. Colleges and libraries usually have them to but I don't know if they would do it for you, I'd ask.

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steves

md:
I use a cheep HP 3 in 1 + everything I scan comes out as a pdf.
I would need to ask how not to make it pdf?

mdshunk

Making the PDF isn't as big of a deal as getting the OCR into a PDF. I want to make sure the resulting PDF is searchable with Adobe reader's search tool. If it isn't, the project is for naught. The bookbinder that cut the binding off for me said they'd be glad to do it for 3200 bucks. Yikes!

No wonder that Google's current project scanning in old books out of the New York Public Library have every page as a straight graphic scan.

Thanks all of you guys for your suggestions and advice. I'm taking it all in, and I'm going to experiment with a few things.

In case anyone's wondering, it's the UK electrical code.

Agent Ezzard

I own the full version of Acrobat and it does exactly what you're wanting to do. As for anyother solution. You got me...

welovepainting

google primo pdf that is a free file converter

mickeyco

May have found what you're looking for, it's a freeware program and has none of that spyware or malware (according to them). I tried it and it works surprisingly well.

TopOCR - Free OCR Software for your Camera or Smartphone
It'll work for scans as well.

http://www.topocr.com/index.html

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Cole

I use it as well and have had no problems.

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mickeyco

I don't think Cute PDF writer has OCR (optical character recognition), I think that's what MD is looking for to make the PDF file searchable and to be able to copy and paste from.

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Cole

You are correct sir, it does not have OCR capabilities.

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Dansbell

The real trick here is going to be keeping the same formatting. As mentioned above by mickeyco there will likely be many text recognition errors. If you can scan to word and do your own editing you can print to PDF online using http://createpdf.adobe.com/. They will let you print 5 files for free.

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welovepainting

...

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adriand

Most scanners come with free OCR software which will scan and attempt to translate your book pages into a word or other format document.

I have scanned a few handbooks with typewritten pages. But scanning to OCR is not perfect and usually you need to do a lot of editing afterwards. Some characters are missed, or not recognized and paragraphs and formatting need to be redone here and there.

So long as you get the documents OCR'd and converted to Microsoft Word, which most OCR software will do, then you will have a searchable document after it is converted to PDF. Buying a cheap scanner that comes with OCR will be way cheaper than going to a print shop and having them do the work. The only disadvantage is all the time you have to spend feeding pages into the scanner.

Other types of files which are PDF'd such as some CAD drawings and gifs or jpegs are not searchable as you probably already know. If you mix text and image files in a word document, the text parts will still be searchable.

I use the free PDF conversion in Google Documents. There should be no problem uploading Word files to Google Documents and converting them into searchable PDF's. Excel spreadsheets and Power point presentations, should all be searchable too when converted to PDF.

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Floordude

PDF995 google that.

It is a program, that when you hit print, it gives you the option to choose pdf995, which saves the document or what ever you can print, as a pdf file.

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tekwrytr

Get a trial version of SnagIt (or buy it for $40). Technical writers use it all the time to extract "text as text." Meaning docs with text-as-images are "automatically" converted to "text-as-text," so you can do whatever you want with it thereafter.

PDF is a good end result. Once you have your text formatted, styled, and arranged the way you want it, save it as a PDF (from Word, or directly from SnagIt).
tekwrytr

InspectorD

As the others have said, there are lots of ways to do this.
IMHO, the issue is copywrite. What are you going to use this scanned material for? Someone owns this "Intellectual Material" and may take issue with you for stealing it!
Dana

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