Hello. I’m not sure if it’s related in any way to piracy, but I don’t know yet of a better place to ask this question on Lemmy, and people often search for PDF magazines on pirate sites (like those from megathread). I have some old magazines, which I would like to scan - page by page - into digital form (for now for personal use) and merge scanned pages into PDFs for convenient reading. Some of these magazines have hundreds of pages each, so I would like to convert them to digital both fast (preferably a few pages in one minute), reliably (without blurred text and images in some places on each page), and in best quality possible. Do I need a professional scanner (for example in a multifunctional office-grade laser printer)? Could a decent portable scanner do the job just as right? Or is my phone’s camera with an appropriate scanner app completely sufficient for that? I would like to read your thoughts about this.

  • Bukka@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    I think the fastest and reliable, but definitely not the cheapest way, would be a document scanner like a Fujitsu IX something. you’d basically cut all the pages so that they’re a format the scanner can accept, stuff then all in there and hit scan. A few seconds later you have a pdf. Using a flatbed scanner is probably the slowest approach, but the one with the highest quality. The cheapest way would be taking photos with your mobile, there are frames that you can buy (or make yourself) where you put your phone in on the top and then place the page below, so that you’ll get a consistent quality. light can get tricky with these.

  • fenndev@fedia.io
    7·
    1 year ago

    Seems like we need an r/DataHoarders equivalent, or a “DigitalArchiving” magazine/community.

  • passepartout@feddit.deEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    Some libraries have these to scan books fast. My old university had one to scan really old books (about 1500). I’m sure it could be used on magazines, you just have to find a library that has one AND is willing to let you use it.

      • passepartout@feddit.deEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        It’s the conventionally correct answer indeed, but everything that does the job is correct here. Cutting open the bindings and letting it run through a scanner which can pull in the pages also does the job, but the magazines are trash after that. But then again, it could be less labour intensive and easier to automate. Also, you can do it at home with a simple scanner.

        I do this sometimes for double printed pages of letters / scripts / my old diary. First i let my scanner pull all sheets on one site, then the other. There is a tool which can sort the pages afterwards accordingly with one click.

  • PagPag@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    If you want to do it efficiently, a camera isn’t the best way to go because it requires manually turning the pages. It’s cheap but labor intensive.

    Scanners are so cheap now that any decent one can be had for $120-200. But if you want to take this a step further, buy a second hand printer-scanner combo. Doesn’t matter if the printer is broken because you don’t need it. Just make sure it has batch scanning abilities.

    Get a cheap paper slicer /guillotine and rip the magazines into uniform stacks. Load into the tray and start scanning.

    The thing you’ll likely run into is the tray not having the capacity required to scan all sheets in one go. Therefore, you’ll need to scan part files and combine them on the back end. You likely need paid software for this, but there is probably open source options. Either way, fly the black flag lol…

    I did this after purchasing $800 worth of mechanical PE prep materials and wanted the flexibility and future proofing of my purchase. This proved a worth while endeavor after a flood took my hard copies. YMMV