PDF Generation from scans

Guido Ostkamp · May 24, 2006

Hello,

I recently bought a Canon Lide 500F Scanner which came with software
that directly produces a PDF file from scans of multiple pages.

My problem is, that I need to rotate a magazine every two pages for
scanning to avoid getting the scanner's document cover in the way,
which is attached to the long side.

Of course, the result is a PDF file where every second page is also
rotated by 180 degrees.

Is there a freeware for Windows or Linux that allows permanent
rotation of single pages in a PDF file?

Or do you solve this problem with other means, e.g. by using a
different software to generate PDF files from scans?

Thanks for any hints.

Regards,

Guido

Rosemary · May 24, 2006

viewscan creates a PDF copy. I'm not sure it it will help you but
maybe you can download it and try.

R

Clarence klopfstein · May 25, 2006

Guido said:
Hello,

I recently bought a Canon Lide 500F Scanner which came with software
that directly produces a PDF file from scans of multiple pages.

My problem is, that I need to rotate a magazine every two pages for
scanning to avoid getting the scanner's document cover in the way,
which is attached to the long side.

Of course, the result is a PDF file where every second page is also
rotated by 180 degrees.

Is there a freeware for Windows or Linux that allows permanent
rotation of single pages in a PDF file?

Or do you solve this problem with other means, e.g. by using a
different software to generate PDF files from scans?

Thanks for any hints.

Regards,

Guido

Our Art-Copy Business and Enterprise software has a feature to auto
rotate images during the scan.

http://www.art-copy.com

PCLIVE · May 26, 2006

Select the check box to display the scanner driver. This is located
in Toolbox. Then use ScanGear in Advance mode. Preview scan each
page and then rotate the necessary ones prior to the final scan.

Danny · May 27, 2006

I'm not familiar with your native Twain interface, but I'd guess that
your options for rotation are somewhat limited for batch scanning
documents.

making manual adjustments on each page during scan sounds painful...
but, if you're only scanning a few pages- I'd probably consider that as
well.

Have you tried to OCR or index your image? that may take care of the
orientation during recognition.

hope it helps~

Danny

Guido Ostkamp · May 28, 2006

Hello Rosemary,

Rosemary said:
viewscan creates a PDF copy. I'm not sure it it will help you but
maybe you can download it and try.

could it be that you are talking about 'vuescan' and not 'viewscan'?

Regards,

Guido

Guido Ostkamp · May 28, 2006

Clarence klopfstein said:
Our Art-Copy Business and Enterprise software has a feature to auto
rotate images during the scan.

Thank you, Clarence, but at the moment I don't want to invest money
into new scanner software.

Regards,

Guido

Guido Ostkamp · May 28, 2006

Danny said:
making manual adjustments on each page during scan sounds painful...

yes, to me as well. A friend of mine checked out the following command
for Linux using Ghostscript tooling:

$ gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -dSAFER -sDEVICE=pswrite -sOutputFile=-
-f file.pdf | pstops "2:0U(580,850),1" > file.ps
$ ps2pdf file.ps file_new.pdf

It needs a lot of temporary disk space due to the conversion to
postscript and back, but appears to be working. I expect however, that
some PDF-embedded information provided by the Canon Scanner Software
is lost by this step.

Maybe I should go and buy a cheaper OEM version of Adobe Acrobat Std.
on Ebay, but I am not sure whether it can do batch rotation of every
second page or whether I would have to do it manually.

Regards,

Guido

Guido Ostkamp · May 28, 2006

PCLIVE said:
Select the check box to display the scanner driver. This is located
in Toolbox. Then use ScanGear in Advance mode. Preview scan each
page and then rotate the necessary ones prior to the final scan.

I am not sure I understand what you mean. I know ScanGear in
AdvanceMode where you do the sharpening, color correction, define
resolutions etc., but I can't find any button in this dialog that
allows rotation of the image before or after the scan.

I can't rotate the to be scanned media itself if you mean that - it's
impossible due to the document cover which is in the way.

Regards,

Guido

Per Larsen · May 28, 2006

Guido said:
Hello,

I recently bought a Canon Lide 500F Scanner which came with software
that directly produces a PDF file from scans of multiple pages.

My problem is, that I need to rotate a magazine every two pages for
scanning to avoid getting the scanner's document cover in the way,
which is attached to the long side.

Of course, the result is a PDF file where every second page is also
rotated by 180 degrees.

Is there a freeware for Windows or Linux that allows permanent
rotation of single pages in a PDF file?

Or do you solve this problem with other means, e.g. by using a
different software to generate PDF files from scans?

Thanks for any hints.

Regards,

Guido

Two hints:

1. You can scan the document to a multipage tiff-file and then rotate every other page before printing to a pdf-file using some (freeware or shareware). I'm (mostly) using Irfanview for editing the tiff-file, and PDF995 to produce the pdf.

2. When I scan directly to a pdf-file using my CanoScan 5200 (either with the CanoScan ToolBox or Scangear), I can rotate every other temporary image file (each page) before all pages are printed. The temporary files are stored as bmp-files in the (Windows) temp directory.

hth
PerL

Guido Ostkamp · May 30, 2006

Hello Per,

Per Larsen said:
1. You can scan the document to a multipage tiff-file and then
rotate every other page before printing to a pdf-file using some
(freeware or shareware). I'm (mostly) using Irfanview for editing
the tiff-file, and PDF995 to produce the pdf.

I found no way to directly scan to a multi page tiff file using the
Canon Software, but anyway I can scan to single image files, rotate
some and batch print the stuff using Irfanview and FreePDFxp.

The drawback is that I will loose the ability to search for text in
Acrobat Reader; if I understood the Canon software correctly some OCR
results are put into the PDF as a word search list though the PDF
itself contains the pages only as images.

This would probably not be the case if I used Adobe Acrobat for
rotation of the pages. Unfortunately the price is unacceptable high
here (~ 500 Euro) unless you buy an OEM version on Ebay. Is there
somebody who can tell whether the OEM versions are upgradable?

2. When I scan directly to a pdf-file using my CanoScan 5200 (either
with the CanoScan ToolBox or Scangear), I can rotate every other
temporary image file (each page) before all pages are printed. The
temporary files are stored as bmp-files in the (Windows) temp
directory.

I will have to investigate that further, probably I've looked at the
wrong directory. The one mentioned in one of the dialog boxes did not
contain the images, just the resulting PDF after conversion was
finished.

Thanks, Per!

Regards,

Guido

Per Larsen · May 31, 2006

Hello Guido,

Guido said:
Hello Per,

I found no way to directly scan to a multi page tiff file using the
Canon Software, but anyway I can scan to single image files, rotate
some and batch print the stuff using Irfanview and FreePDFxp.

I may not have been precisely enough here: Using Irfanview you can scan to multipage tiff (using File->Aquire/Batch Scanning i 3.97 & 3.98). You can even Alt+Tab between Irfan and CanoScan while the scanning goes on. The multipage tiff ends up in a file (given by you in the Aquire/Batch dialog), not in Irfanview's window — only the last scanned page is viewed there.

I've checked now that you can't scan to multipage tiff using the pdf-button (maybe that's obvious), but you can set up one of the Scan-1 or Scan-2 buttons (in the CanoScvan Toolbox dialog) to use Irfanview in the 'Link Scanned Images to' of the Scan dialog. I find it easier to control the whole scanning to multipage tiff directly from Irfanview, not from the Toolbox.

The drawback is that I will loose the ability to search for text in
Acrobat Reader; if I understood the Canon software correctly some OCR
results are put into the PDF as a word search list though the PDF
itself contains the pages only as images.

This would probably not be the case if I used Adobe Acrobat for
rotation of the pages. Unfortunately the price is unacceptable high
here (~ 500 Euro) unless you buy an OEM version on Ebay. Is there
somebody who can tell whether the OEM versions are upgradable?

I will have to investigate that further, probably I've looked at the
wrong directory. The one mentioned in one of the dialog boxes did not
contain the images, just the resulting PDF after conversion was
finished.

That's right, you should look in Windows temp directory, as seen in the 'Environment' dialog on the 'Advanced' tab of 'System Properties' or in the list you get when you run the 'set' command in a command prompt window:

C:\>set
ALLUSERSPROFILE=D:\Documents and Settings\All Users
APPDATA=D:\Documents and Settings\perl\Application Data
CommonProgramFiles=D:\Program Files\Common Files
....
....
SystemRoot=D:\WINNT
TEMP=D:\tmp <--- here
....

Regards,
PerL

MyVeryOwnSelf · May 31, 2006

I recently bought a Canon Lide 500F Scanner which came with software

that directly produces a PDF file from scans of multiple pages.

My problem is, that I need to rotate a magazine every two pages for
scanning to avoid getting the scanner's document cover in the way,
which is attached to the long side.
...
Or do you solve this problem with other means, e.g. by using a
different software to generate PDF files from scans?

I have Windows XP and Office 2003, and the following seems to address your
question:
Start >
All Programs >
Microsoft Office >
Microsoft Office Tools >
Microsoft Office Document Scanning
This application lets you scan a multi-page document. It brings up a
"Document Imaging" window that lets you rotate individual pages, among
other editing tools. When the document is as desired, it can be printed
from the "Document Imaging" document to a PDF file.

Guido Ostkamp · Jun 1, 2006

Hello unknown user,

MyVeryOwnSelf said:
I have Windows XP and Office 2003, and the following seems to
address your question:

I do not own a copy of M$-Office because I use the free and great
OpenOffice.org instead, but anyway thanks for your hint :-)

Regards,

Guido

mgfv43 · Jun 2, 2006

Our Art-Copy Business and Enterprise software has a feature to auto
rotate images during the scan.

http://www.art-copy.com

The new version of PaperPort will also detect the correct orientation
of scanned images.

www.nuance.com

But it is not free.

While I understand the aversion to buying software, free stuff is
sometimes worth the price you paid for it.

MK

Guido Ostkamp · Jun 4, 2006

But it is not free.

While I understand the aversion to buying software, free stuff is
sometimes worth the price you paid for it.

Sometimes, yes. Overall I can say I'm mainly working under Linux OS
and I'm quite pleased with the functionality and quality of not only
free, but open-source software. In this case here I'm simply unwilling
to spend half or more of the money invested in scanner and bundled
software to buy another software with functionalties I don't need
(document management for example), just to overcome a trivial rotation
problem.

Nevertheless, your hint is appreciated!

Regards,

Guido

PDF Generation from scans

Guido Ostkamp

Rosemary

Clarence klopfstein

PCLIVE

Danny

Guido Ostkamp

Guido Ostkamp

Guido Ostkamp

Guido Ostkamp

Per Larsen

Guido Ostkamp

Per Larsen

MyVeryOwnSelf

Guido Ostkamp

mgfv43

Guido Ostkamp