Creating an ebook out of images of individual pages

October 16, 2008 1:22 PM

I scanned a book. I want to take the images of individual pages and turn them into a pdf ebook. How?

What program makes this easy? I tried using pdf printers like primopdf and pdfcreator but they leave a lot of whitespace around the image (like it is printing to paper, but I just want each page of the pdf to be cropped to the size of the image itself), pages get turned upside down, and these programs have problems with large images (automatically downsizing images, etc.), etc. etc.

FYI, I've got access to windows and linux. I don't want to have to buy anything either.

posted by symbollocks to technology (10 comments total)

I recently did this for a friend. After scanning the pages, I straightened and cropped them in Photoshop, and then saved each page as a separate PDF file. Next, I fired up Adobe Acrobat, and compiled all of the separate pages into one giant PDF.

If you don't have access to Photoshop and Acrobat, then you may want to check out some open source software that will allow you to edit the scanned images (GIMP comes to mind, but there might be something easier, since you won't be performing advanced graphic editing). I can't think of an open source PDF writer that will let you merge/split files, but I'm sure that there's probably one out there.

One last thought-If you have a friend with a Mac, you can use the stock software to do the same. iPhoto to edit the scans, and then Preview to make and merge the PDFs.

Good luck!
posted by mattybonez at 1:53 PM on October 16, 2008

I use jpeg2pdf on linux to create a pdf from a directory containing numbered jpegs for each page (page001.jpg, page002.jpg, etc). Depending on the scan quality, the resulting file can get pretty large. Of course, if your pages weren't already jpegs, you'd have to convert them or use another tool..
posted by globotomy at 1:53 PM on October 16, 2008

Also, this is a lot easier if you have Acrobat Professional (where there is a drop-down button called Create PDF > From Multiple Files).
posted by mattbucher at 1:55 PM on October 16, 2008

mattbucher: That's exactly what I'm looking for. I've used it before, but I don't have access to a computer with it right now and I don't want to have to pirate AcroPro for just this one thing.
posted by symbollocks at 1:58 PM on October 16, 2008

Acrobat Pro has a 30 day free trial.
posted by procrastination at 2:19 PM on October 16, 2008

I've used ImageMagick and pdftk under linux.

for i in *scan* ; do convert $i $i.pdf ; done
pdftk *.pdf cat output book.pdf

Often I do fiddle with the images a bit first, doing things like "convert -black-threshold 50% -white threshold 80%" (for text pages), and converting them to 8-bit grayscale before turning them into pdf files, but you get the idea.
posted by fings at 2:35 PM on October 16, 2008

I work at a university helpdesk and wind up looking at a lot of programs and freeware for students.

You can use a word processing program such as MS Word or OpenOffice Writer to insert the individual scanned and edited images into your document, then use a program such as PDFCreator or PDF reDirect to convert the word document into a pdf.

Alternately, use PDF reDirect to convert the individual images into individual pdf files. Use the Merge function to turn groups of the pdf files into chapters, then merge the chapters into your book. This perhaps offers the highest level of quality control.
posted by Kioki-Silver at 4:26 PM on October 16, 2008

For your next such project VueScan software will do multi-page PDF output files.
posted by trinity8-director at 4:50 PM on October 16, 2008

mattybonez- you can skip using Acrobat if you have a recent version of photoshop. Check out File > Automate > PDF Presentation. Should save a chunk of time.
posted by bryanboyer at 6:45 PM on October 16, 2008

This program (which I love) has a feature that allows you to make a pdf from image files.
posted by kingjoeshmoe at 11:16 AM on October 26, 2008