ScanKromsator

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monday2000
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ScanKromsator

Post by monday2000 »

Hello,

I'm new to this forum.

I'd like to present the following:

ScanKromsator v5.6A. The unofficial program reference

http://www.djvu-soft.narod.ru/kromsator/eng.htm

I have just (today) finished translating it from Russian (my native language) to English.
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daniel_reetz
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Re: ScanKromsator

Post by daniel_reetz »

It's very interesting to see all the work that ScanKromsator has inspired. I mean, after all, ScanTailor was made just because the documentation and interface were so inscrutable, and now you've gone and made nice documentation. I think as a whole we're pretty invested in Scan Tailor at this point, but your work is much appreciated.
monday2000
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Re: ScanKromsator

Post by monday2000 »

I slightly edited the section http://www.djvu-soft.narod.ru/kromsator/eng.htm#3 yesterday. It's probably the best section to start learning ScanKromsator.
daniel_reetz
I mean, after all, ScanTailor was made just because the documentation and interface were so inscrutable.
Yes, it was perhaps the main reason. The other important reason is that ScanKromsator is not open-sourced and has an unknown license.
I think as a whole we're pretty invested in Scan Tailor at this point, but your work is much appreciated.
I would say that ScanKromsator is much more preferable than Scan Tailor (nevertheless all its flaws). ScanKromsator offers by far more capabilities than Scan Tailor.

The fundamental Scan Tailor's flaw is posted here: http://diybookscanner.org/forum/viewtop ... t=110#p980 :
That's a great find. Automatically splits page pretty well. Too bad there's no option to use only one feature like split page alone. You have to run your pages through the whole process which is very time consuming.
ScanKromsator does not have this problem.

Although Scan Tailor (ST) might look prettier than ScanKromsator (SK), it is really delusive in terms of real usage. In the reality though ST is IMHO much weaker than SK. Scan Tailor is just a pretty toy, while ScanKromsator is a real handy tool for scanned books processing.

PS Actually I was always criticizing both ScanKromsator and Scan Tailor. Some really good and handy scan-processing program does not exist yet.

But if to choose between SK and ST - without any doubt ScanKromsator is the best choice.
phaedrus
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Re: ScanKromsator

Post by phaedrus »

Interesting comments monday. In my limited experience I found ST did a much better job of cleaning up the image than SK whereas SK did a good job of straightening things out. With the work that Tulon & Rob et al are putting into it I suspect it won't be long before ST deals well with the latter as well.

Anyway thanks for the translation, I had read a couple of short english articles on SK but this looks quite comprehensive & will allow me to perhaps run a better test of SK to compare. Good work, I'll have a decent read over the next day or so.

Cheers, P.
monday2000
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Re: ScanKromsator

Post by monday2000 »

By the way, in the Russian Djvu book-scanning community it is generally accepted that photocameras are completely not suitable for digitizing paper books. Because it results in the very poor-quality scans.

Best of all is to purchase a flatbed CCD-scanner. For example, Epson Perfection is a good choice (I have Epson Perfection 1270). A CIS scanner is not good, because of a poor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field .

If you still want to use a photocamera - then it must have at least 16 Megapixels and you should press an opened book page with a glass - to flatten it prior to shooting. But still you are going to have troubles lighting up properly a book page.
Hasher
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Re: ScanKromsator

Post by Hasher »

But Monday a flat bed scanner is so slow and would break the bindings of the book. Maybe in 5 years 16mp cameras will be standard :-)
Mandor
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Re: ScanKromsator

Post by Mandor »

monday2000 wrote:If you still want to use a photocamera - then it must have at least 16 Megapixels …
I'm sorry, but I don't agree. For example, my 8 mpx camera shoots a book with 20 cm (~ 8") height in 3400 pixels. So, 3'400/8 ~= 400 dpi; better than 300 dpi - unofficial "standart" for book scanning.
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daniel_reetz
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Re: ScanKromsator

Post by daniel_reetz »

monday2000 wrote:By the way, in the Russian Djvu book-scanning community it is generally accepted that photocameras are completely not suitable for digitizing paper books. Because it results in the very poor-quality scans.

Best of all is to purchase a flatbed CCD-scanner. For example, Epson Perfection is a good choice (I have Epson Perfection 1270). A CIS scanner is not good, because of a poor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field .

If you still want to use a photocamera - then it must have at least 16 Megapixels and you should press an opened book page with a glass - to flatten it prior to shooting. But still you are going to have troubles lighting up properly a book page.
Most of us have decided that we will trade a little resolution for a lot of time. To scan 400 pages on a flatbed takes between 3 and 7 hours of continuous scanning, and you have to break the binding. That is unacceptable to many of us. Even 20 minutes is a long time. And as Mandor pointed out, this 16 megapixel number is entirely dependent on the size of book being scanned, so that is not always or even often true. In many cases 5mp would be enough.

On my new scanner, the lighting is excellent. The glare is almost undetectable, if it is there at all, and the page is very evenly lit. To put these kinds of arguments to rest, over the next week I am going to put up examples of how excellent the output of our scanners can be, because this kind of hand-wavy criticism is getting a bit tiring. 16mp? lighting problems? Whatever.

As far as Scan Tailor goes, I support ST 110%, it is the future of software for our scanners, and I am grateful that Tulon comes over here and chats with us. If you're going to call his work a "toy", when he generously supports our community, shares his code, and when Rob and others are working to improve that software, from this point on I will consider that trolling. I don't want to discourage technical comparisons. But you may not start a flame war or troll session about SK and ST here, period.
monday2000
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Re: ScanKromsator

Post by monday2000 »

daniel_reetz
But you may not start a flame war or troll session about SK and ST here, period.
Am I? :) Sorry, but you sound real funny...
StevePoling
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Re: ScanKromsator

Post by StevePoling »

The hand-wavy criticism to-and-fro is exactly why I proposed scan racing: "OK, you think you know what you're doing? Beat this!"

I've seen this a lot in another context. Pinewood derby racing. Yeah, there's a lot of talk and advice given. But *I* will listen to the guy who has the 1st place trophies.

Yes, it is competitive. If the competition gets too cut-throat, it isn't fun or helpful. But it does give an opportunity for people to "put up or shut up." (And I'm saying this b/c I'm probably the worst one here for saying stuff he knows not-enough about.)
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