Putting together a lot of scanned docs into a PDF

Hi...

I have to scan a document (around 80 pages) and will need to string them together into a PDF.

What should I use to put the scanned documents into PDF format (a "free" option would be very helpful)?

Would not the size of the document be very large? Is there a way to make the document smaller in size before zipping it?

Thanks

 

Download doPDF, highlight all the images, and select "Print" then select the PDF printer and should print to a PDF. I'm not too sure about the size part though, sorry.

 

Ok. doPDF...I'll get that. Thanks. But I think it is gonna be a huge file. Is there a way by which I can make each scanned document smaller in size...but its gotta be clear enough to read either on an e-reader or on the computer?

Thanks

 

The only way to really reduce file size is to play with your scanner settings, depending on the contents of the documents. Lower the DPI as much as you can while retaining the fidelity you need, as well as lowering the colors as much as possible. Ideally black and white, greyscale if it's not readable there, and color as a last resort.

 

@pitabread...thanks. I will play around with the scanner settings and see what happens.

 

When printing as PDfs, you can also reduce the dpi resolution...it might save some mbs.

You will be saving the scanner images as images, so you could also use a mixture of image editors and document editors to reduce the file size(I got a originally 15mb pdf down to 900kb).

With image editors like photoshop or Gimp(free), you should be able to reduce the quality of the image when saving(gimp is just a slider bar when saving jpegs) thus reducing the file size of the image. After that just use a pdf printer to make it into one file...

With gimp I reduced a 3mb color jpeg image of a vocab page from a textbook and made it 600kb which was still readable(it was an image taken from a camera but you should get the similar results from a scanner as long as you can read the initial scanned page from your device).

But even with this, I only saved like 5mbs when printing to pdfs(3mb image became 15mb and 600kb became 10mb when saving them as a pdf through dopdf).

So take another step which is use an word processor/office software like Open Office(I think this will work in Microsoft Office).

Take the images you made smaller in Gimp and put them all on a document and then use openofffice's export to pdf option...without messing with the setting(like jpeg compression), that single 600kb image on the document became a 940kb pdf(the 3mb image became 3mb pdf). Even the regular print button(to dopdf) makes the files size smaller once you put the image in a word document. It might take a good deal of testing to get the right trade off so just make sure it is readable for each step.

 

If it's pure printed text optical character recognition might be an option.

The other question is, what hardware do you use. I have an HP Scanner at home 2400 something... old, but hey, it works
It can scan directly to pdfs and the results are definitely smaller than images, alternatively, I can use optical character recognition. It works quite well on printed text, it fails at handwriting (really fails, why didn't it turn it into a picture?).

I'd use Adobe Acrobat to merge them... I suppose you could use a 30 day trial to get done what you need done?

 

Depending on what scanner you have, there may be an option to scan to pdf integrated in the unit/software. I've got an Epson TX510FW which scans to both image and pdf (which is really handy for multiple pages).

Otherwise use some of the previous mentioned free pdf programs - but make sure to scan at a lower resolution of you will have an unsightly large pdf file when you are finished.

Also: Try the link below for a trial version of Adobe Acrobat X Pro, you may be able to convert files to pdf with high quality compression. I have Acrobat X Pro and wouldn't use anything else.

Adobe Acrobat X Pro Trial:
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=acrobat_pro&loc=ap

 

OK. The scanner I have is a part of a Printer/ Copier/ Scanner unit: HP DeskJet F4185. As DetlevCM says, it just works - been through 3 laptops, but this unit has served me well.

@juniper: Thanks. I'll give it a shot.

@ Kdawgca: Thanks for the tips. I'll have to download Gimp and give it a shot.

One other thing: I may have access to a heavy-duty scanner at work, which I can use to scan though if that would be helpful or not, we'll see, I guess. What I want to scan is a booklet - a manual - which needs to go into our electronic database, while we maintain the original hard copy in our files. We should have converted it into a digital copy a while back, but it's never been done.

I have heard of OCR, but have never worked with it. I'll look into this ASAP if it would help my particular problem.

Thanks

 

doPDF is an excellent choice for PDF printing. It's one of the few free PDF printers that doesn't rely on Ghostscript (not there's something wrong with GS).

As DetlevCM noted, your HP AIO may scan directly to PDF. After the AIO scans the first page, a prompt for additional pages should appear. If you select YES or OK, the AIO will append them to first scanned page for a single PDF, no merging necessary.

However if you need to merge several PDFs into a single one, I recommend Gios PDF Splitter and Merger. It's freeware and works great. Tweaking the DPI and scan quality of the original PDF scans is the only way to reduce the merged file size.

--L.

 

Vuescan ( VueScan 9 Scanning Software for Windows 7, Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) and Linux) is probably the best of the third-party (non-manufacturer-specific) scanner software out there. It does a very very good scanning docs into PDFs.

It supports just about every scanner out there even ones the manufacturers have abandoned or not updated driver support for. Runs on 32/64 bit windows, Linux, and Mac.

Payware, and well worth the $$$.