Book Scan Wizard beta is available

[matt]

I wasn't clear on the syntax for your PostCommand and Pipe commands. How would I run each file through ImageMagick's convert command (to sharpen the output)?

Oh, I RTFM and it's actually quite easy:

Code: Select all

PipePNG = convert png:- -unsharp 1.5x1.5 png:-


if anyone else would like to do the same...

[steve1066d]

* the File selection dialog on Mac OSX allows navigation to a directory but does not seem to allow file selections to actually be made (there's no place to type the filename and the Save button stays greyed out)

This tool works with directories, so the chooser is actually a directory chooser, not a file chooser. There should be a "select" button to choose the directory.

* in general it's not always obvious when BSW is working -- maybe a progress bar or activity spinner?

I agree, there's times where some sort of feedback is required. I'll probably first concentrate on making sure the mouse busy cursor works everywhere, then I'll look into adding a status bar.

* maybe add page name where perspective adjustment settings taken as a comment?

Good suggestion, and an easy one too

I don't use ImageMagick for any of my processing, but I'll look into adding a sharpen feature. It will be faster to handle it in the program itself.

I'm glad you found the software helpful, and thanks for the suggestions!

Steve

[steve1066d]

Version 0.9.6 is out:

Webstart version:
http://bookscanwizard.sourceforge.net/run/

Manual installation:
http://bookscanwizard.sourceforge.net

This one is a fairly minor update. Here's some of the improvements:

• The busy cursor should work much better, and I also added a progress bar while it is running a batch.
• The syntax is also more forgiving, as you can separate arguments by commas and/or spaces. Strings can be quoted with double quotes. Previously, some commands were pretty rigid in what they were looking for.
• Added the page # as a comment when you create a crop or other command.
• Updated a lot of the command documentation
• Various bug fixes.

Steve

[daniel_reetz]

Small suggestion - throw your Sourceforge site into your profile as your personal page... I'm trying to test out the latest version but my internet connection is FUBAR.

[matt]

Hi Steve,
I've been using the Book Scan Wizard quite a bit lately, with excellent results. (Thank you!) At this point there's only one part of the workflow where I have any significant concerns. Given my current scanning setup (very low-brow), the book commonly ends up moving a fair amount during the scan run (both rotating and translational movement), sometimes gradually and often suddenly (ie between two shots). To compensate for this, I'm finding I have to create several FixPerspective settings (for both L/R) for each section of the scanning run.

Code: Select all

# Configure the left pages]
Pages = left
Rotate = -90
Pages = left BSW_0000-BSW_0199
PerspectiveAndCrop =  699,132, 2322,125, 2312,2238, 709,2234 # BSW_0012 L (IMG_0038)

Pages = left BSW_0200-BSW_0299
PerspectiveAndCrop =  773,132, 2383,111, 2389,2238, 796,2251 # BSW_0202 L (IMG_0133)

Pages = left BSW_0300-BSW_0400
PerspectiveAndCrop =  810,138, 2420,118, 2420,2244, 823,2254 # BSW_0300 L (IMG_0182)

# Configure the right pages]
Pages = right
Rotate = 90

Pages = right BSW_0000-BSW_0199
PerspectiveAndCrop =  607,46, 2298,86, 2278,2308, 587,2319 # BSW_0031 R (IMG_0024)

Pages = right BSW_0200-BSW_0299
PerspectiveAndCrop =  658,71, 2339,115, 2302,2312, 623,2308 # BSW_0203 R (IMG_0110)

Pages = right BSW_0300-BSW_0400
PerspectiveAndCrop =  682,78, 2349,125, 2302,2302, 651,2302 # BSW_0301 R (IMG_0159)


Clearly the need for this is related to the inconsistency of my input images and I wouldn't expect BSW to be able do anything about that (unless it got super fancy and was able to do automatic edge detection!) But what I'm wondering about is: is there any way for BSW to automate/facilitate the process of creating L/R calibration settings for an arbitary number of sections of a scan run? I don't have any brilliant and/or simple UI ideas off the top of my head, but ideally the human operator would be responsible for drawing the L/R page edges for 1-n page-pairs throughout the book, and BSW would take care of the details of coming up with the boilerplate commands to accomplish this. Any thoughts on this?

Finally, here are a few other minor points/feature requests I've come up with:

* some kind of visual indicator which line the cursor is on when in "execute to cursor" mode?
* an option to reload file list in case files have changed in the source directory?
* an option to overwrite files instead of aborting the run if files exist in the output directory
* automatically run preview after issuing fix perspectiveandcrop (or similar) commands?
extremely minor:
* keyboard shortcuts for Preview and Submit?
* it wasn't immediately clear that bsw.txt is only option for config filenames
* on Mac's the standard redo command shortcut is cmd-shift-Z

Thanks again!
Matt

[steve1066d]

Matt,

Thanks for the response..
I've got a new version that I'll be releasing soon that will address many of those suggestions...But Sourceforge has had a hacking attempt and they have locked everything down so I can't upload a new version. If it isn't up by tonight I'm going to more the project over to google code.

There's still a bit more work I'm planning on doing, but I think with the changes I've got so far should help.

[steve1066d]

I’ve got a new version of BookScanWizard.

Web start version: http://bookscanwizard.sourceforge.net/run/

Manual install: http://bookscanwizard.sourceforge.net/

There has been quite a few usability improvements. Here’s the list:

• Added the ability to show were the perspective and crops will be placed without actually running the transform and crop. I replaced the “Final” checkbox with checkboxes that indicate whether or not the Perspective and crop operations should be previewed as boxes or if they should be rendered. This allows for easier adjustments, as it is quicker to flip through pages and make sure things are lined up.
  
• Added hotkeys for preview, submit and zoom in and out. The scroll wheel on the mouse will also zoom the image in and out.
  
• If you hold down the shift key while pressing the next or previous image, it will move ahead by two pages instead of one.
  
• Fixed an issue where the selections jumped if you moved the mouse slightly while clicking a new corner.
  
• Undo and redo works for viewer made changes, and doesn’t overwrite previously selected text.
  
• When configuration additions are made by choosing right click options in the viewer, the system automatically does a preview.
  
• The system will prompt you to overwrite output files if they already exist instead of just aborting.
  
• Added the ability to merge left & right files using the command line (as opposed to doing it as part of a script). (Run the program with a –help to get the syntax).
  
• There’s also support for using barcodes to control the scan. This isn’t documented yet, however (It will be coming soon to a wiki near you).
  
• Added a Sharpen command, which is similar to the ImageMagick “unsharp” command.

Note: I fixed an issue with the Rotate command, but as a side effect it caused coordinates to change. This means that if you have a script that has a rotate command, the coordinates for things like Perspective and crop will be invalid. Once I go out of beta I’ll make sure that scripts are backwards compatible, so things like that won’t be a problem long term.

[gsloop]

First, Thanks!!! Awesome work!

Tried ST and it doesn't have an "area" crop - plus having the "text" config is really nice once you have a pretty bog standard set of inputs. Then just handle the perspective and crop and off you go.

I'm using it, and it seems great. Was using 0.9.6 the last few days, but it would barf on all my L side pages. [not barf totally, but would use 100% CPU and get very little done in hours.] (I was running the Lefts and Rights as completely separate jobs)

The new one seems to be handling the same L pages better - though I'd swear it is taking longer on L pages than Rights? Dunno. Sounds totally implausible, but I'll try to be more precise and accurate in my measurement - rather than "it seems slower..."

This does pretty much anything I really want to do. Now I just need to figure out how to batch both the lefts and rights together. (I don't think timestamps will work since not always does one camera get triggered before the other. I'm having a bit of trouble with my USB trigger...)

Thoughts?

-Greg

[steve1066d]

Greg,

How many megapixels is your camera?
What destination DPI are you using?
How many cores does your computer system have? (Is it a dual or quad core?).

Your symptoms seem like the program doesn't have enough memory dedicated to tile caching. I thought I made the limit high enough so that it didn't need to be tweaked, but maybe not. I'll add a command that lets you override the cache size so you can see if increasing it gets around the problem.

Hmm.. I'm don't think I have anything in the code that makes the left pages go slower but who knows.

I bet the timestamp approach that I use will work for you. As long as both cameras fire within a second or so of each other it will correctly figure things out. The cameras don't have to have their time synchronized or set to fire one after the other.

If not, there is an option on the LoadLRImages to ignore the timestamps and simply go left, right, left, right, etc.

I'm glad to hear it has been helpful.

[gsloop]

It's been a few days - sorry for the delay.

One Camera (Canon SX30IS 14MP, the other is Canon SX120IS 10MP)
Usually setup as L and R respectively - though not always.

I can say the new version is handling both sides equally well, so that's good. The symptoms I described sounded crazy - I've done SW dev and do IT support, so I know it sounded like I was huffing glue or smoking the really good stuff - but I swear, the L pages were like the CPU was in some really crazy death-spiral.

I left it running for like 12 hours and it processed something like less than a dozen pages.

It's a C2D 2.6, 2G memory, XP. Wasn't a lot of other stuff running, and IIRC it didn't seem memory excessive when I looked at the process.

But that's all past now - just thought I'd recount things a bit more clearly in case it helps for debugging something down the road.

I'll try the L/R images together and see what I get.

-Greg