How do I create multi-page PDF documents with my Canon N1220U Scanner and Mac 10.4?

August 7, 2005 1:54 PM

How do I create multi-page PDF documents with my Canon N1220U Scanner and Mac 10.4?

I have downloaded the software patch to get the scanner, which I purchased several years ago, to successfully get the scanner working with my powerbook G4 and Mac OS X 10.4. The software patch has integrated itself into Adobe Photoshop 7.0, which does allow me to save the file as a "Photoshop PDF". Is this PDF the same as any other PDF? I'd like to archive multi-page paper documents to PDF. I have successfully scanned a single page, but would like to archive articles consisting of multiple pages into a single document.

My ultimate goal is to conver paper documents into digital form and burn them to CD.

posted by cahlers to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

You can use the "Combine PDF Pages" command in Automator, which is part of 10.4. You'll find Automator in the Applications folder.

Just run Automator, drag the Combine PDF Pages action to the right hand pane of the application, do Save As Plug-In and call it something like "Combine PDFs".

From then on, if you select a bunch of PDF files and right-click (or control-click) them, you will see the Automator action in the little contextual pop-up menu.
posted by bcwinters at 2:28 PM on August 7, 2005

Combine PDFs will work with Tiger, Panther and Jaguar as well.
posted by snarfodox at 3:00 PM on August 7, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks bcwinters.... where does the output from the Automator workflow go?
posted by cahlers at 3:35 PM on August 7, 2005

I emailed a followup to you just now, cahlers... I think the data gets dumped into /tmp, but Automator isn't 100% clear about exactly what it's doing.

Maybe add "Open Finder Items" at the end? (Or cut your losses and try snarfodox's application suggestion!)
posted by bcwinters at 5:35 PM on August 7, 2005

VueScan will do multiple-page scans directly to PDF, or you can scan them, use Preview to "Print to PDF", then use Combine PDFs or PDFLab to merge the pages into a single document.
posted by mrbill at 7:10 PM on August 7, 2005

I don't know how much document scanning you're going to be doing, or how much disposable cash you have, but if levels of both are relatively high, I can heartily recommend picking up Fujitsu Scansnap. It's an automatic feeding sheetfed scanner that scans both sides of the page in one pass, and the software saves direct to PDF. It's really fast, and awesome for archiving paper documents electronically.
posted by trevyn at 8:35 PM on August 7, 2005