Hi, so anyone done it or have any tips? also call me stupid but are there any ways for me to scan in and still have text recognition so i can search these pdfs? thanks guys
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Any Tips On Scanning Magazines to PDF's?
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Eraserhead
macrumors G4
Erendiox
macrumors 6502a
Someone else correct me if i'm wrong, but what you want to do is borderline impossible. I'm sure in the future, with the right myrad of software and font/graphics recognition, this might be possible. But right now, no way. I've never seen or heard of anything that can do this.
Cheers 🙂
Sdashiki
macrumors 68040
There are lots of OCR things out there.
Some scanner software comes with it, but in my experience (which is limited and not recent) it left alot to be desired. Wasnt easy to use, and was cumbersome.
It can be done, i am sure of that, but easily, I doubt it.
What you are asking is for a machine to look (without the benefit of eyeballs and a brain) at splotches of ink and determine what is an "A", "Z" and everything inbetween.
This is why human brains are always far superior to computers.
You can see the letter "E", in 1000 different fonts and immediately recognize it as the letter "E". You can rotate it 12 degrees, flip it upside down, you still know its an "E".
A computer cant do any of this.
Some scanner software comes with it, but in my experience (which is limited and not recent) it left alot to be desired. Wasnt easy to use, and was cumbersome.
It can be done, i am sure of that, but easily, I doubt it.
What you are asking is for a machine to look (without the benefit of eyeballs and a brain) at splotches of ink and determine what is an "A", "Z" and everything inbetween.
This is why human brains are always far superior to computers.
You can see the letter "E", in 1000 different fonts and immediately recognize it as the letter "E". You can rotate it 12 degrees, flip it upside down, you still know its an "E".
A computer cant do any of this.
CanadaRAM
macrumors G5
Just because you have not heard of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist...
For the OP:
Scanners have shipped with OCR software for about 10 years now, and this software generally can scan to a PDF. They vary in their accuracy of course. Read online and magazine reviews to get a feel for the software accuracy. If you are doing a large volume, there are scanners with sheet feeders that specialize in just this, Fujitsu is the biggest in document imaging, followed by Pitney Bowes IIRC. Mac compatibility should be one of your checklist items, as some of these are Win only.
Some names to lookfor are ReadIris and Omnipage
thanks guys, i knew i had seen some specialist scanners just wasnt sure if it was possible with mine