Help me organize my scanned papers and sketches

June 20, 2009 1:00 PM

I'm looking for a program or file format to organize hundreds of scanned page image files and add comments to them. Any suggestions?

I've been scanning all my old papers/sketches/notes into my computer so I can recycle the physical copies and save space in my apartment. Paging through them with the Windows image viewer is fine, but I'm wondering if there's a program that I could use to organize them all into a single file, like a PDF maybe? I'd also like to have a field at the bottom where I could add and edit text comments. If this is possible to to do with Acrobat, how do I do it? And if not, is there a program that will do something similar to what I'm describing?

posted by moonroof to computers & internet (7 comments total)

This free thingie: Microsoft Pro Photo Tools would let you add text comments directly to the image files as metadata (particularly if they're JPEGs, I believe.)

Virtual printer software would allow you to put them all in a single PDF.
posted by XMLicious at 1:22 PM on June 20

You can certainly do this with Acrobat! At least, I know you can do it with version 8 or higher - not sure about previous versions. In Acrobat 8+, File ... Create PDF ... From Multiple Files.

If the files contain relatively legible text, you can also use the OCR functionality to identify that text and include it in the PDF. The screen will still show the original image, but the text itself will be selectable and searchable. It just so happens I'm doing exactly this right now - I scan in all my papers and shred or recycle the originals.
posted by me & my monkey at 2:17 PM on June 20

I would strongly recommend making a PDF with Acrobat so that you can always view the pages in sequence. Here's a little about creating text fields in PDF files.
posted by mtphoto at 3:34 PM on June 20

Flickr? Scribd?
posted by tobiaswright at 5:11 PM on June 20

For the PC, you could use PaperPort - it can manipulate PDF files and add notes. And it doesn't cost as much as Acrobat.
posted by blue_wardrobe at 7:57 PM on June 20

IrfanView could also be an option. I think it has a free personal use licence.
posted by doublehappy at 12:10 AM on June 21

If you number the files in order, zip them up, and change the extension from .zip to .cbr, there are a number of readers that'll let you treat this as a poor man's PDF. The fact that it's free may outweigh the need for a special viewer. The other benefit is that .cbr readers are explicitly designed for displaying high-resolution scanned material. In my experience, Adobe Reader's scaling of bitmapped images is pretty poor.

As far as keeping notes, I don't know if an annotation standard has arisen for .cbr files yet, but I wouldn't be surprised.
posted by Lazlo at 12:17 AM on June 21