Scanning tips
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,046
    These are the tips I've discovered to get really good scans:

    1. Scan your original as a jpg2000 at 600 dpi. Unfortunately, you can only do this a page at a time.
    2. Open the page in Preview, save as pdf, using the black and white filter. This step alone will get rid of most pencil markings and other junk on the page.
    3. Combine the various pages in Acrobat
    4. Optimize to get stuff straight
    5. Use the redaction tool in Acrobat to clean up and stray garbage (library markings, shadow). If you blow the image up, you can even clean within staff lines, if you're that dedicated.

    It's best if you can make every scanned page the same size. That might not work with an overhead scanner. In that case, trim the pages in Acrobat to the same size.
    Thanked by 1canadash
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,157
    If your scanner software can produce PNG or TIFF, those are lossless.
    Thanked by 2CCooze Adam Wood
  • canadashcanadash
    Posts: 1,499
    Thanks. I scan a lot of music for our orchestra and this is very helpful indeed!
  • innocentop
    Posts: 64
    ScanTailor is also very helpful: https://github.com/scantailor/scantailor/wiki/User-Guide
    Thanked by 1rarty
  • contemporaryworship92
    Posts: 257
    I presume we are only scanning works under public domain? or licensed for free copying (such as Corpus Christi Watershed does)?

    I had incorrectly believed that OCP would sell you a license to photocopy their sheet music and choral octavos. I recently tried to find such a license on their website and came up short.
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,046
    Of course.
    I have little interest in anything published after 1963, which means it's mostly PD...in Canada...
    Thanked by 1contemporaryworship92
  • johnmann
    Posts: 175
    My setup: Create PDF from Scanner in Adobe Acrobat. Only optimization is deskew to straighten the pages. Make PDF/A-1b compliant to maximize compatibility. Scanning is done at 300 dpi grayscale. If for some reason I need to scan before importing to Acrobat, I scan to TIFF. Standalone pictures, I scan to and save as PNG.
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,046
    I like nice white pages. Particularly if I'm dealing with older yellowed/stained music, it's better to go text than grey. One can go directly to pdf and get an acceptable result, but I find that the conversion gives me a cleaner product. Library tests have shown that 400 dpi gives more detail, but that there isn't much legibility to be gained beyond that.

    I'm a little frustrated right now though. I have new Macs at home and work, and image Capture is giving me images that are 50" to a side. They can be converted to page size, but it gives huge files (8 meg or so). I haven't found a solution yet. Any ideas?
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