Fun with scanners!

[baratron]

I have a ton of documents to scan before I go. Academic papers that I need to take with me and would prefer to carry in my computer rather than as heavy bundles of paper. So far, my automatic document feeder is not working and only scanning half the pages. Why does it do this? WHY? Do I need to sacrifice a chicken to the printer or something?

And the OCRing doesn't seem to have worked terribly well, e.g.:
Unterberger,U., Hofibcrgcr, R., Gelpi. E., Flicker, H., Budka, B., & Voigtlander, T. (2006). Endoplasmic reticulum stress features arc prominent in Alzheimer disease but not in prion diseases ill vivo. .Journal or Nellropatholo,,,ry alld E>(perimental Neur%gy, 65, 348·-357.

Other journal titles include:
* Biochemical and Biophysical Research COI1lIllUllications
* . .fournal 4N'eurochemistl)'
* A1alecular Biology of the Cell
* Gelles & Developlllent
* 7i'cnds in Molecular Medicine
* Cellular and :l1oleeular LUi! Sciences"
* Journal of eel/Biology

I didn't even know I'd READ the Journal of Eel Biology!

Journal titles are worst affected because the OCR program can't cope with italics, but paper titles get mangled too. "Extensive involvement of autophagy in Alzheimer disease: An il11l11uno-clectron microscopy study." !111!

Think I'll try saving the PDF as Image Over Text instead of Text Over Image. That is, as soon as my printer stops crashing!

Comments

[wateryfowl.livejournal.com]

I think hardware prefers your native fauna to anything moved later.

Anyway, what OCR are you using that it's that bad? The only problem I had with my OCR is that it would botch formatting (by stripping it, having spaces / linebreaks in illogical places)

Anyway I would say your best bet is to just scan to them to lightweight PNGs, unless there is some reason you really want it as proper text.