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How to get a good clean newspaper scan?

I tried a few times to scan newspaper articles, but the images I got were always blotchy and with bad colors, sort of like this:

Sometimes I see some really good scans, like this:

What is the trick to get such good results? Do I need a high-quality scanner, or some good Photoshop filters?

If there is something I can do using free tools that would be awesome.

How can I ping a range of IP addresses simultaneously [closed]

I have a bunch of machines on an IP address range which I want to ping simultaneously as a quick and dirty way of telling which ones are switched on. What (free) software can I use to do this?

I'm using Windows Vista.

Looking for simple Windows scan (multiple pages) to one PDF application? [closed]

I would like to find some simple scan software for a Windows machine that can scan to PDF, but I would like it to do batch or multiple pages into one big PDF.

I saw a couple questions on scan to PDF software, but did not see anything talking about scanning to large multiple page PDF's.

EDIT: I am surprised there are not more options out there. Do many of the scanners/all in one devices come with included software that perform this function?

EDIT 2: I tried Scan2PDF and it locked up on me multiple times in the middle of the scan job and then gave me non-english error messages. Otherwise, I liked how simple the app was, just select number of pages and hit OK.

Any other success stories out there?

Scan-to-PDF software for Linux?

I have a workflow whereby I scan paper documents into searchable PDFs using a Fujitsu ScanSnap S500 document scanner. I am not a great fan of the bundled software, but it's dead simple to use: place a stack of paper at the top, push the green button and a searchable PDF comes out.

Now, I'd like to do something similar on Linux (Ubuntu 10.10). The scanner is supported out of the box.

I've looked at gscan2pdf and XSane:

• XSane looks powerful, but not really suitable as a workflow solution;
• gscan2pdf is a bit closer to the "push the button, get the PDF" ideal, but still not 100% there.

Any other software you can recommend (free or otherwise)?

Is there a free tool which will let me type onto PDFs and then save, or at least print, them?

I have a large number of paper forms which I need to complete. I'd like to scan them in, then type the answers onto them in the relevant spaces and print them out, rather than writing on them with a pen (my handwriting is terrible).

I can scan and generate PDFs without a problem, but I'm looking for a free tool which will let me type text over the top of the scanned PDF, and let me at least print the final output. Saving would be good too but isn't essential.

I'm running Windows 7. Any suggestions? Would the Adobe Acrobat free trial let me do this? I could scan the forms as images and set them up as background images in Word but I've got hundreds of pages and I'd like something quicker and simpler.

Scanning multiple pictures, then automatic cropping

Is this possible even ?

I put 4 pictures on the flatbed scanner, scan them as a group (with white background from the scanner <-- heavy contrast with the scanned pictures). Now, I'm interested - is there some program which could determine the (little it may be) the rotation of those pictures, their boundaries and cut them up from the "big image" so that I get 4 picture images ?

I've no idea if this makes any sense ... if it doesn't ask away and I'll do my best to confuse you even further.

How can I crop every page of a large PDF file?

I have a 1300 page PDF file of a scanned book that was unfortunately not cropped when scanned. The actual book page dimensions are around 6x9", but each scanned page is 8.5x11", the size of the scanner bed.

For much smaller PDF files I could throw it into Photoshop and crop the page, but this is a huge file. What is the best way to losslessly crop all of the pages of the file, in either Windows or OS X?

How can I easily correct slight rotational misalignment in scanned images

I've got a whole lot of scanned images (> 500) the majority of which were scanned with the paper not completely square. They need to be rotated about 1-5 degrees to be aligned again.

Is there any software that does this? I know some scanner drivers do but mine doesn't seem to.

Update: It seems that thing I want here might be Image Registration software.

What dpi should I be scanning my old photos in?

I scanning in my old paper photos from the 80s and 90s.

What DPI level should I be scanning them in? I've tried 150dpi (default) and 300dpi and don't see any difference (other than the size of the resulting image).

Easiest way to scan books?

What's the easiest tool to use to scan books? I find that using my scanner is difficult for books?

Scanning a document: device not ready error

I recently bought a Samsung SCX-4623F Printer-Copier-Scanner-Fax machine. Printing and copying work fine, but I have been unable to scan anything with it.

The device is connected to a PC running Windows 7. It is shared in my home network, specifically with a laptop running Windows XP (which has the Samsung software from the CD that came with the device - the PC just automatically downloaded the drivers).

I tried several options:

• I put the device into scan mode and I can "choose" between one option: Scan to PC. When I click it, it let's me "choose" again "Local PC". When I click that, it says "Connecting..." for a few seconds and then "Not Available".
• I tried scanning through the Windows 7 printer/scanner screen, and I get the following error:
• I tried scanning from the Samsung software through the Win XP machine, and I get an error stating something like (the original error is in Hebrew, so it's not exact) "The scanning device is not responding".
• I tried combining clicking the scanning software (both Win 7 / Samsung stuff) with clicking the scanner to scan to local PC, with same results.

How do I scan with this thing?

Scanning old papers in TIFF format. Is scanning at 48-bit color worth it?

I am currently scanning old papers with some notes on them using an Epson V370 scanner. I want the output files to be TIFFs, however I am not sure which bit depth to choose.

One of the papers has only a few notes on it in black ink and no other colors. I want to suck out the highest quality from that scanner, but is there a point in scanning white paper with black ink at such a high color depth such as the 48-bit that is the max on my scanner?

Also if I have papers with blue ink, will higher color depth make a difference in the quality?

Is there a good way to "automatically" scan business documents?

My parents own a relatively small machine shop and would like a way to have documents such as purchase orders and invoices scanned into a system where they can be entered into their accounting software by somebody offsite. Is there a relatively inexpensive scanner (up to a few hundred dollars) that will allow them to simply drop incoming documents into a tray for them to be automatically fed through the scanner and sent to a document system or folder on the computer or something like that? They have a multi-function printer/scanner/fax machine but the scanning process needs to be more refined than putting a paper on the scanner and going to the computer to scan it in and all that.

What is a good option for this type of system?

Photocopying using a separate scanner and printer

I have 2 printers.

1. HP Deskjet F2235 - designated scanner (has printing issues)
2. Brother HL-2040 - designated printer (doesn't have a scanner)

Just by using those two both connected to the same computer, is there a way to perform a photocopy operation by scanning via the designated scanner then immediately it being printed from the designated printer?

Obviously you could save the scanned files then print them, but short of making a script or manually doing this, is there a faster automatic way through settings or third-party software?

How to auto-trim scanned images using imagemagick or graphicsmagick?

I've got some scanned images in *.jpg format. They are scanned using A4 scanner, in greyscale or colour. Scanned pages have very different dimensions - some A5, some A6, some business cards etc. Scanner cover is white.

I want to trim all the white borders using imagemagick or graphicsmagick (those tools, because I want to further batch-process it). I understand that the border is scanned, so not perfecty white and that sometimes can cause trimming too much or too less of the image. However using trim parameter with fuzz I always get too big image. For example, using image of business card below:

gm.exe convert -crop -fuzz 50% 01-pixelated.jpg 01-pixelated-gm.jpg

produces image which is still not cut from the right and bottom. The result is the same no matter what number I put to the -fuzz parameter.

Could you please test it and advise the command line that will do the job?

http://i.stack.imgur.com/TXcD6.jpg