How can I make a picture into a scan?
March 1, 2011 10:30 AM Subscribe
How do I flatten a picture of a document to make it more like a scan?
I would like to be able to take a photo of a document and automatically tweak it so that it is a scan of that document.
This would include clipping around the edges of the document and removing any artifacts that due to the position of the camera. These artifacts would include :
1. Straightening the picture so that the document is orthogonal to the line of sight.
2. Removing distortion due to the camera being closer to the center of the document than the edges.
3. Removing actual bending of the document ( this would be most pronounced in the case of a book but any paper might have some curl or slight folds to it ).
4. Removing shadow artifacts that are caused by slightly folded or bent paper.
Maybe a single algorithm could take care of 1. & 2. at the same time.
3. & 4. are less important.
I tried out scanr and it was almost good enough. I had some problems uploading files and processing seemed to fail some of the time but when it worked it seemed good. I also tried to try qipit but could not even get past registration. Then I decided to ask here.
An online service is overkill though. Really all I am looking for is a simple application or maybe a gimp or firefox plugin that does all or some of the tweaks above.
Thanks.
- Dave
I would like to be able to take a photo of a document and automatically tweak it so that it is a scan of that document.
This would include clipping around the edges of the document and removing any artifacts that due to the position of the camera. These artifacts would include :
1. Straightening the picture so that the document is orthogonal to the line of sight.
2. Removing distortion due to the camera being closer to the center of the document than the edges.
3. Removing actual bending of the document ( this would be most pronounced in the case of a book but any paper might have some curl or slight folds to it ).
4. Removing shadow artifacts that are caused by slightly folded or bent paper.
Maybe a single algorithm could take care of 1. & 2. at the same time.
3. & 4. are less important.
I tried out scanr and it was almost good enough. I had some problems uploading files and processing seemed to fail some of the time but when it worked it seemed good. I also tried to try qipit but could not even get past registration. Then I decided to ask here.
An online service is overkill though. Really all I am looking for is a simple application or maybe a gimp or firefox plugin that does all or some of the tweaks above.
Thanks.
- Dave
On the off chance you have an iPhone Genius Scan does most of those things. (Getting one or two pieces of clear acrylic and placing them on the pages before photographing can help significantly with page bending.)
posted by Ookseer at 7:18 PM on March 1, 2011
posted by Ookseer at 7:18 PM on March 1, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
Me, I use Abbyy FineReader, which has features specifically to assist with processing images fromdigital cameras. This ain't cheap though.
posted by fief at 11:53 AM on March 1, 2011