# Trying to find software that will straighten "crooked" scan images



## AhrenBa (Jul 21, 2005)

Hello,

I am scanning the pages of an out-of-print book for a neighbor and find it very time consuming.  A problem that I keep running into is that even though the page is aligned with the scanner, it sometimes comes out crooked on the screen. 

Is there software that can automatically straighten the image for me? Is there an easy way to do this? Thank you!


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## Danyo (Jan 29, 2004)

Check the post at the top of this forum. Most of the programs will give you the option of straightening or turning the pictures.


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## ChuckE (Aug 30, 2004)

You might look around your scanner program, or at least another scanning program. Many have an automatic straightening function when you tell it you are scanning in text.


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## hewee (Oct 26, 2001)

If your Image program lets you put grin line on the image that can help you out in turning the image.


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## AhrenBa (Jul 21, 2005)

Thank you guys for the responses.

@Danyo
I couldn't find where you were talking about. Could you provide me a link to the page of the specific forum post. Thank you.

@ChuckE 
I am using Epson's scanning software that came with the Epson Perfection 4990 Photo scanner. Do you know if this has straightening abilities? Thanks.

@hewee 
I am using Photoshop to edit the scans. Does this have this feature you are talking about? If so, where can I find it? Thanks.


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## ferrija1 (Apr 11, 2006)

AhrenBa said:


> @Danyo
> I couldn't find where you were talking about. Could you provide me a link to the page of the specific forum post. Thank you.


http://forums.techguy.org/digital-photography-imaging/496808-look-here-first-free-photo.html



AhrenBa said:


> @hewee
> I am using Photoshop to edit the scans. Does this have this feature you are talking about? If so, where can I find it? Thanks.


You can *Select* the whole image (Ctrl+A) and use *Free Transform* (Ctrl+T) to rotate the image until it is straight.


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## hewee (Oct 26, 2001)

I don't have PS on this PC but I bet it does have a grid or grid lines.
Look at your PS help files and look for or search for grid and you should get info on it if it is there.


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## ChuckE (Aug 30, 2004)

No idea if Epson's scanning software can do auto straightening out. I did a quick look at the Epson manual, or one of them, and it mentions that scanning text will automatically convert scanned text into editable text (an OCR, Optical Character Recognition function).

If that works for you, a slight skew to the text is not going to affect the recognition of the characters. PLUS! the benefits of getting scanned text into an editable form (no longer images) will be a lot more space conservative (smaller file sizes), faster to open, and you will probably be able to put multiple pages (like whole chapters - even the whole book) into one file.


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## hewee (Oct 26, 2001)

I can not do that in PhotoImpact ferrija1.


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## Noyb (May 25, 2005)

AhrenBa said:


> I am using Photoshop to edit the scans. Does this have this feature you are talking about? If so, where can I find it? Thanks.


*YES* .. which version ??

Go to the measure tool .. and "measure" a straight line either vertical or horizontal.
Go to Rotate > choose arbitrary > the angle to rotate is already loaded from the measure tool.
Just Do it.


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## ferrija1 (Apr 11, 2006)

hewee said:


> I can not do that in PhotoImpact ferrija1.


I meant for AhrenBa to do that in his/her copy of Photoshop but you should be able to do that somehow, is there a rotate function in PhotoImpact?


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## Noyb (May 25, 2005)

Rotating a Transform is not an exact way of doing this in Photoshop.
And it's a whole lot more complicated than "measuring" it.


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## hewee (Oct 26, 2001)

ferrija1 said:


> I meant for AhrenBa to do that in his/her copy of Photoshop but you should be able to do that somehow, is there a rotate function in PhotoImpact?


Ok but I had to still try it to see if I could do it because it may of worked.
Then again there may be a more easy way in PhotoImpact and I bet there is.


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## AhrenBa (Jul 21, 2005)

Noyb said:


> *YES* .. which version ??
> 
> Go to the measure tool .. and "measure" a straight line either vertical or horizontal.
> Go to Rotate > choose arbitrary > the angle to rotate is already loaded from the measure tool.
> Just Do it.


Thanks for the suggestion. Where is the measure tool. (sorry, I am new with photoshop) Thanks!


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## ChuckE (Aug 30, 2004)

I think he was asking for an auto function for the straightening out a scanned image.
Heck, even IrfanView can do a "Fine rotation" (0.1 to 359.9 degrees) of an image.

But that isn't what he wanted.


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## ferrija1 (Apr 11, 2006)

AhrenBa said:


> Thanks for the suggestion. Where is the measure tool. (sorry, I am new with photoshop) Thanks!


Answer Noyb's first question, what version of Photoshop?


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## AhrenBa (Jul 21, 2005)

ferrija1 said:


> Answer Noyb's first question, what version of Photoshop?


Woops! Sorry about that. Forgot to mention that.

I am using my neighbor's copy of Photoshop CS2.


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## Noyb (May 25, 2005)

OK ... we're the same ...
Right click the eye dropper ...


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## AhrenBa (Jul 21, 2005)

Noyb said:


> OK ... we're the same ...
> Right click the eye dropper ...


Thank you very much for your help! I'll give it a try.


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## Noyb (May 25, 2005)

Holler if you need more detail .. but it's pretty simple .. even ferrija1 could do it


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## ferrija1 (Apr 11, 2006)

Or you could try what I said and actually see the change.


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## ferrija1 (Apr 11, 2006)

Noyb said:


> Holler if you need more detail .. but it's pretty simple .. even ferrija1 could do it


Actually, I'm having some problems.....Whats the eye dropper? I don't see any dropping eyeballs.  



I'm thinking about the Geico "Even A Caveman Could Do It" commercials. I could only find one.


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## slipe (Jun 27, 2000)

If the methods suggested aren&#8217;t working it might be that you scanned in one bit black and white or &#8220;lineart&#8221; as some scanners call it. You have to convert to grayscale before Photoshop will rotate it in other than 90 degree chunks.


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## Billstan (Feb 12, 2007)

My graphics program, Paint Shop Pro, has a simple Straighten tool which allow you to place a line on part of an image that should be horizontal or vertical and then automatically rotates the image to make it so. There is also a Rotate tool that allow you to rotate the image a specified number of degrees and a Distortion tool which allow you to correct either vertical or horizontal keystoning. I'd be very surprized if Photoshop or Elements or GIMP don't have similar features.

As a suggestion, you might find it much faster to "scan" a book with a digital camera than with a flatbed scanner. And you can do it most any place. Still need to use OCR, however, to convert to digital text.

Bill (VOBP)


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## AhrenBa (Jul 21, 2005)

Billstan said:


> My graphics program, Paint Shop Pro, has a simple Straighten tool which allow you to place a line on part of an image that should be horizontal or vertical and then automatically rotates the image to make it so. There is also a Rotate tool that allow you to rotate the image a specified number of degrees and a Distortion tool which allow you to correct either vertical or horizontal keystoning. I'd be very surprized if Photoshop or Elements or GIMP don't have similar features.
> 
> As a suggestion, you might find it much faster to "scan" a book with a digital camera than with a flatbed scanner. And you can do it most any place. Still need to use OCR, however, to convert to digital text.
> 
> Bill (VOBP)


Thank you for your response. Do you know if OCR programs can take text out of a PDF document? As of right now, I am scanning the pages to PDF files. However, later down the road, my neighbor may want to convert the pages to text files. Can OCR software do the same thing it does from scans with a PDF? Thanks


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## Noyb (May 25, 2005)

AhrenBa said:


> Can OCR software do the same thing it does from scans with a PDF? Thanks


Yes .. But the good programs are expensive.
I'm kinda bored today ... Got one you want me to try ??

But I would have scanned to a high resolution Image FIRST

Did you find the ruler tool and figure out how to use it in PSCS2 ??


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## AhrenBa (Jul 21, 2005)

Noyb said:


> Yes .. But the good programs are expensive.
> I'm kinda bored today ... Got one you want me to try ??


Cool! Thanks! I'll upload one.  Let me know if I should upload a higher-res version. I trimmed it down by like 75% so that the file would be small. 

The originals are like 3600x2600 or something like that.

Also, I have been using the grid function in Photoshop, and then rotating the photos. It works great!

*EDIT:* I uploaded a slightly higher version (second pic).


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## Noyb (May 25, 2005)

Don't use Jpeg with any compression ... it adds noise around the letters ...
which makes it hard for OCR to read.
I scan at 300dpi and save as BMP ... I may touch it up in PSCS2 ... to send to Abbyy pro OCR.

I wouldn't go straight to pdf ... can't edit the file/image if needed.

Grid is the hard way .. I'll see if I can put some PSCS2 ruler instructions together...
You'll love it.


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## AhrenBa (Jul 21, 2005)

Noyb said:


> Don't use Jpeg with any compression ... it adds noise around the letters ...
> which makes it hard for OCR to read.
> I scan at 300dpi and save as BMP ... I may touch it up in PSCS2 ... to send to Abbyy pro OCR.
> 
> ...


Cool, so did the OCR take the jpg image and pull the text out? I will save the rest of the scans in BMP. The only thing is he would like to combine all these scans into one PDF "digital book". In that case, will it really matter too much as far as the jpeg quality since it'll be a PDF anyways?

Thanks, I look forward to learning how to use that ruler.


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## Noyb (May 25, 2005)

Just some Ideas ... If I'm serious ...
I would OCR to a word doc .. spell check it ... using a text to voice engine ... have it read the results back - while I proof read the original .... then pdf it.

BTW .. Word can combine many pages into a book.
PDF is the last thing I'd want to do.

If you must use jpeg .. don't use any compression.
Do you have a good OCR program ?? ... not the ones that come with a scanner.

Can you play a Quick Time movie ... And want to download a 38mb "ruler" video ???


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## AhrenBa (Jul 21, 2005)

Noyb said:


> Just some Ideas ... If I'm serious ...
> I would OCR to a word doc .. spell check it ... using a text to voice engine ... have it read the results back - while I proof read the original .... then pdf it.
> 
> BTW .. Word can combine many pages into a book.
> ...


I have AABBYY. And yes, that video would be fine. I am on cable, so it shouldn't take long.  Thanks!


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## ChuckE (Aug 30, 2004)

AhrenBa said:


> Do you know if OCR programs can take text out of a PDF document? As of right now, I am scanning the pages to PDF files. However, later down the road, my neighbor may want to convert the pages to text files. Can OCR software do the same thing it does from scans with a PDF? Thanks


Adobe Acrobat (this is NOT the Reader) can read .PDF files with OCR capability. It has been able to do this for many years. I went to an Adobe Acrobat class at least 8 years ago and that was one of the features taught.


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## Billstan (Feb 12, 2007)

I'm not very familiar with either OCR or PDF. But, as I understand it, a pdf document has already been digitized, i.e., it's a formatted text document not an image. But you may not be able to edit it as you would a Word document depending on how it was created. If you enter "OCR & PDF" or something similar in Google, you'll get a lot of references to tell you what you can or cannot do.

Bill


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## Noyb (May 25, 2005)

Good that makes it easy ..
Info starts at ~~ 1:50" >>> http://2noyb.home.insightbb.com/Ruler.mov

Abbyy FR Pro ... or Scan to Office ??


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## Noyb (May 25, 2005)

The last time I made a book …
I scanned in 300dpi bmp .. did some minor editing in PSCS2 … (if needed) 
Let Addyy Fr Pro read the scans and put into a word.doc.

And assembled the many page Word.doc …

Then using Word .. I could print (even then odd) .. and( front to back .. back to front)
And print the book ... both sides of each page.
Don't understand why you'd want a pdf.

I also used the free version … http://www.readplease.com/english/downloads/
To help me do some proof reading of each page.
OCRs can get a little confused with 1s and Is and 0s and Os …
Sometimes, these (and other reading errors) are not caught with spell checkers.


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## ChuckE (Aug 30, 2004)

Billstan said:


> I'm not very familiar with either OCR or PDF. But, as I understand it, a pdf document has already been digitized, i.e., it's a formatted text document not an image. But you may not be able to edit it as you would a Word document depending on how it was created. If you enter "OCR & PDF" or something similar in Google, you'll get a lot of references to tell you what you can or cannot do.
> 
> Bill


A PDF document is a file written in basically a text readable format, but not something that most people will tend to understand. It is written in a page description language. A PDF composer (originally there was just Adobe Acrobat, since Adobe created it) makes that file, and uses that language to exactly define the look of the document. It is written in a programming language that the PDF reader (software, usually) understands and can interpret it back to the original form.

(By the way, the "text" language of a PDF file does now have provision to also contain/describe bit-mapped images. It is not as efficient as 'saying' something like "line this wide, starting here and ending there" but there are times where it is extremely difficult to use that sort of language to describe a droplet of water on a rose petal - for example.)

The two biggest plus points, that I can think of right now, was that the PDF file was basically unalterable (not so true any more) and it can be sent to any printer (through the PDF reader) to print the page to the best capability of that printer to come out with the same as what the page originally was; same size, fonts, images, colors (somewhat), etc. That is, up to the capability of the printer. If you have a 200 dpi black and white printer, it is not going to be as well rendered as what might come from a 2400 dpi color printer, but the page will be quite close, up to the capability of that printer.

(For those of you who like trivia, the Postscript language for the PDF, was created by two Xerox developers (Chuck Geschke and John Warnock) who were instrumental in making the InterPress language used by Xerox at the time. InterPress was only used "in-house" by "in-house" printers, and those developers could not convince the "suits" at Xerox that this was a viable and potentially commercial item that should be available outside of Xerox. Just one of many, many, Xerox screw-ups in their history of developments and other screw-ups. (I am an ex-Xeroid who was around when things like the mouse, icons, InterPress, Ethernet, high-graphical displays and WYSIWYG were just being developed.) Those two Xerox developers left Xerox and created Adobe Systems.


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## AhrenBa (Jul 21, 2005)

Noyb said:


> The last time I made a book
> I scanned in 300dpi bmp .. did some minor editing in PSCS2  (if needed)
> Let Addyy Fr Pro read the scans and put into a word.doc.
> 
> ...


Thanks for that video. That measure tool is seriously amazing and easy to use.

The reason that he would like to use a PDF is because he want to make a digital book only, not a printed copy. He has the printed copy now (that is what I am scanning in), and he would like to make to make it all digital. Isn't navigating through a PDF file much easier than in Word? Bookmarks and table of contents should make that pretty easy.


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## Noyb (May 25, 2005)

Thought you'd like it.
AH .. The plot thickens  
Sorry ... Don't know much about Acrobat ... But sounds like your right for a digital book and navigating.


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