alternative to abbyy?

[Misty]

If you're using a "real" camera (and not a cell phone camera), it definitely has real zoom - so you can zoom in and out of the picture without losing quality.

To understand why you don't lose quality, you need to know the difference between "optical" zoom and "digital" zoom. Optical zoom is "true" zoom - it uses the camera's lenses to get closer to a picture. When you use the optical zoom on, say, a 10mp camera, you're capturing a true 10mp image regardless of how zoomed in you are.

Digital zoom is a "fake" zoom. It works by cropping the picture, so by zooming in with optical zoom you're actually losing quality and getting less resolution than your camera is capable of. You should always turn your camera's digital zoom off in the settings. It's never worth using. In fact, it can produce worse results than cropping on your computer after taking the photo.

If you have the digital zoom on your camera turned off, you should use the zoom on your camera - it will be better than zooming in (or cropping) after taking the photo, and your scans will look better. You may still need to do some cropping, but possibly not as much.

[snaguy]

Zooming will help minimise the need for post processing. Have you tried Book Scan Wizard and Scan Tailor? These are better suited to this type of book scanning than Abbyy.

What was your Acrobat version?

The download for the sample raw images has a password could you pm me please.

You may be able to still use your scans rather that scanning again.

Can you post some pics of the book scanner your using.

[builderstudent2]

@Misty - And that's why knowledge is power. I have to learn more about cameras.

Snaguy, The password is your username: "snaguy". I use portable Acrobat Pro 10.

You may be able to still use your scans rather that scanning again.

Oh, that's not a problem. I am using them, it's just that I was looking for a quicker way to solve the crop problem. But when the other user on another forum suggested zooming in and cropping that way, I now know what a huge mistake I made in the first 20 books I scanned. I'll just crop each of the 20 books' pages one by one. But from here on out, I will be using zoom to take the pictures the right way the first time thus eliminating the need for ANY post-processing. I'll just rotate them and combine the images into a PDF. Super simple. But I'm not looking forward to the next 4-5 days since it will consist of nothing but editing for at least 5 hours a day to finish the editing of the 20 books I scanned incorrectly.

The scanner I have is this: (I am considering selling it if anyone is interested...)
http://www.diybookscanner.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=89&start=10

Edit:

Misty, I have a question for you. I checked my camera's settings and my camera's user's guide. I was shooting using "Standard". That means the focal length is 35 - 560 mm and the shooting characteristics are "Enables shooting at zoom factors of up to 16x with digital and optical zoom combined."

So, should I use:

1. the above setting called "Standard"

OR

2. the setting "Off" which reads focal length 35-140mm and shooting characteristics "Enables shooting without digital zoom" ?

[Misty]

Misty, I have a question for you. I checked my camera's settings and my camera's user's guide. I was shooting using "Standard". That means the focal length is 35 - 560 mm and the shooting characteristics are "Enables shooting at zoom factors of up to 16x with digital and optical zoom combined."

So, should I use:

1. the above setting called "Standard"

OR

2. the setting "Off" which reads focal length 35-140mm and shooting characteristics "Enables shooting without digital zoom" ?

Never use digital zoom. Turn it "off" so there is no digital zoom.