ScanKromsator

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monday2000
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Joined: 04 Mar 2014, 00:52

Re: ScanKromsator

Post by monday2000 »

StevePoling
Sorry, I did not understand what you wanted to say. Please speak clearer.
I've seen this a lot in another context. Pinewood derby racing.
It is not a good comparison (allegory) here. The fundamental difference is that the racing has some strict rules - but nobody knows what exactly a good scan-processing program should be. No strict rules for that yet.

To be concise, I'd like to summarize the following ideas:

1. Both ScanKromsator and Scan Tailor have no future - as they are both conceptually erroneous programs (I can list the detailed reasons why if you want).

2. It is a good idea that you are trying to help Tulon to develop Scan Tailor - Scan Tailor should be considered as a "training ground" - prior to develop a some really good scan-processing program (which does not exist yet).

3. Only the high-end professional 16-20 Megapixels photocameras with a nice expensive lens are allowed to be used for DjVu-digitizing paper books. Otherwise you would just inevitably produce some shit DjVu-books. You may like this idea or not - but it is really so. The cheap low-pixel cameras are sufficient only for plain OCR.

4. If to choose between SK and ST - without any doubt ScanKromsator is the best choice.
period
- like daniel_reetz likes to say. :lol:
Hasher
Posts: 77
Joined: 26 Sep 2009, 03:05

Re: ScanKromsator

Post by Hasher »

StevePoling

I can see you point .I suppose to start speed up scanning you need to look at what is slowing the processes to start with . Personally I want to have the pictures taken directly from the camera to the computer on the fly which will be the biggests time saver. Of course post processing software is a big part of this and all our options are not perfect but we are spoilt in the fact that we have the choice between ST ,SK and now Artscan.

Racing might be a thing to do down the track and I for one will be giving feedback on my scanner once up and running . From there we can get idea of perfomance , what works and what doesnt. Just look at Dans evolving hardware it proves things are moving forward.
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rob
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Re: ScanKromsator

Post by rob »

Just to add my opinion -- I've seen this sort of thing happen a lot in the application space. You'll have one application for the "power users" with tons of options and features, and you'll have another application for the "point and click users" which doesn't have as many options, but is "good enough" for the majority of cases. Have you ever seen the zip command line? It's very different from just right-clicking on a directory and selecting "send to compressed folder" (or "compress" for us point-and-click Mac users)!

So because ST and SK serve different kinds of users, you can't really compare the two applications. If you compare features, certainly SK will come out on top, because SK has all the options, but ST and SK were developed with different goals in mind.

So please, if you're going to comment on ST or SK, don't say that one is great and the other one sucks. Or that Dan Reetz's portable scanner rocks, and mine sucks. Or that Linux is awesome and Windows sucks.

Rule #1 on this forum is Be Nice. As a forum admin, I guess I have to watch out for this... 8-)

--Rob
The Singularity is Near. ~ http://halfbakedmaker.org ~ Follow me as I build the world's first all-mechanical steam-powered computer.
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rob
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Re: ScanKromsator

Post by rob »

I'm curious as to why an 8 megapixel camera wouldn't produce good djvu files. I know that for a letter-size (or maybe A-size) paper, 8 megapixels will yield approximately 300 dpi, and in practice, I measure 400 dpi by zooming (not optical zoom!) on a hardcover book page size. Then, I convert to binary using gray-to-binary upscaling to 600 dpi, which seems to retain the beauty of the font. Obviously if I did a simple threshold and then upscale, the result would be ugly.

Here's a sample of a page straight out of the camera, processed to 600 dpi 1 bpp, and then shoved through djvu (djvu libre 3.5.22). Can you let me know what the issue is? I know it's probably not *professional-grade*, but that's not what we're here for. We like "good enough" :)

Thanks,

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monday2000
Posts: 18
Joined: 04 Mar 2014, 00:52

Re: ScanKromsator

Post by monday2000 »

rob
The quality of your DjVu is pretty good. But notice that your book has obviously a nice paper and a big font. It is not a common case I would say.

Besides the issue "scanner vs. photocamera" was discussed so many times in our forums, many samples were considered. Yes, the scanner is slow - but it yields the guaranteed quality.

Probably photocameras are yet not so good to reliably replace scanners. Hopely it'll happen one day.
spamsickle
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Re: ScanKromsator

Post by spamsickle »

Wow, I guess I missed a lot of back-and-forth here.

I'm not interested in a flame war either, but for my purposes the photo camera is more than adequate for 95% of my book digitizing at this point, and that includes many books with photographs and technical illustrations. I'm with Dan -- I have a few thousand books I'm trying to pare down to something that doesn't take two days to pack and move, and trading a little quality for a lot of time is an exchange I'm quite willing to make.

I also listen to MP3s, and don't mourn the loss of quality compared to vinyl played on a $5000 system, and while I can see the difference an HD TV provides, it's not something I've felt I needed to purchase for my own viewing.

If you can't be happy with less than 16MP and studio lighting, or a flatbed scanner, I say knock yourself out. I certainly won't insist that you should settle for less. Myself, I'm happy that I can take a hundred-pound pile of books and, with a little work, squeeze it onto a DVD as a collection of PDFs. When I zoom in on the images, they actually appear just as clear to me as the smaller images on the page.

I don't regard any of the software we've used as "conceptually flawed." I look forward to trying any improvements that are made, and perhaps even contribute to making them, but tools are tools, and I measure them by their usefulness. I've found these tools to be useful, and appreciate the effort that went into making them (even the ones I don't use personally).

I have several old flatbed scanners sitting in storage, so if someone wants to design a 2-page-at-a-time DIY setup using a vacuum and old scanner parts, I'll be happy to give that a try too. I'd rather see people addressing the flaws they perceive in the tools we have by actually creating better tools, rather than just disparaging what we have. Constructive criticism in the truest sense...
Gentleman
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Re: ScanKromsator

Post by Gentleman »

Hello, I'm curious if someone is still using ScanKromsator? It is still being developed (last update was in march 2021? But there is a new update coming soon - 6.72) and it has some nice features. My favourite one is possibility to copy letters from text and paste them in place of letters that are not complete. I really miss feature of some kind of drawing letters (in scantailor) that are not complete which happens very often for me because I scan old books with paper that isn't of good quality.

Unfortunately ScanKromsator is pretty unintuitive and only resources I was able to find are in russian language but thanks to Mr. google translator I was able to learn some basics.

I'm trying to create my workflow and whole process for digitizing books and I like ScanTailor but I'm also open to try any software and recently I have found ScanKromsator and I thought that it would be more popular here. So back to my question, is someone still using it? And what is your experience and opinion about it?
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