Scanning books, under clear plastic sheet, need help

[markem]

Hello!

I has been a very long time since I posted anything here. But.....

I am trying to scan in all of the books I have bought over my life. I recently bought a VEVOR scanner (you can see it on Amazon). Easy to set up - works.

In the current setup the images come out dark and colors are not quite right. I use a CosCo fold-up table which can support up to around 50lbs. The table is flat black. I use colored poster board backgrounds to offset the color of the book. These are Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow. What I do is to put the book under the clear plastic sheet and scan the image. This works but as I said - the images are dark.

What I'd like to do is to have a light above the table that ramps up how much light the scanner is getting and thus make the images brighter and closer to their actual colors.

What I have tried is: 1)Use a regular lamp - causes reflections and flares, 2)Have a lamp pointed at the ceiling - flares (somewhat) and/or I also get an image of the lamp, 3)Bought a photographer's light, set it up, nice colors and tone but you can see the umbrella, and 4)Thinking of getting some low wattage frosted lights but haven't gotten them yet.

The problem that happens is that the clear plastic sheet creates flares where the light is brightest. I could just get a flat bed scanner out and scan the books but this scanner is ten times faster than the flat bed scanner (it is over 10 years old). So I was wondering if any has ever come up against this and figured out a way to scan an image through a clear plastic sheet without getting images of the light source or flares from the light source.

Thanks in advance for any kind of feedback and I think I might just have to go get the flatbed scanner out and use it. :-/

Mark

[waldronate]

Have you tried edge lighting? There are largish ring lights available, but I'm not sure what your budget is. You can also use several led light bars arranged around the outside of the bed. One of the old-fashioned frosted diffuser plates for fluorescent lights can tame hot spots on the photographer lights

[markem]

I'll go look those up. Maybe that's what I need. Thanks a lot! :-)

Oh - on Social Security Disability - so not a lot. :-)

[waldronate]

A few sheets of tissue paper can also make an excellent diffuser, but it can be a little twitchy to deal with.

[markem]

Sounds good! er.rrrrrr - but I'll have to get some. But it should be cheap!

[markem]

Decided to get the flatbed scanner back out. That thing goes all the way up to 4800dpi!. It is an old Visioneer 7100 USB scanner. Unfortunately - it only works on Win98se and WinXP. Win10 will NOT work with it. Maybe VueScan could work with it.

[markem]

Got out the flatbed scanner. This scanner (Visioneer One Touch 7100 USB) has better features than the VEVOR and it makes cleaner/clearer scans also. Unfortunately, it does take about ten times longer to do a scan than the VEVOR. I also tried one last time with the VEVOR to make it scan correctly. I pointed a light up towards the ceiling, out of view of the scanner, and scanned. The images became quite different than what I could see laying there. The letters appeared to be purplish-red (they are black) but the book cover appeared to be close (but not the same as) the original. So I'm going to stick with the flatbed scanner for now. So now - a bit about this scanner. It came out when Windows 98se was the main operating system. It works terrifically with Windows 98se. However, you can also use Windows XP with it and it will work terrifically on there also. Windows 7 and 8 it MIGHT work ok but Windows 10 64bit - it refuses to work at all. I really wish that Visioneer would come out with new drivers for this scanner. Presently, I am using it on Windows XP via Oracle's VirtualBox. I use a shared folder to write the images to and then work on them under Windows 10. This is the easiest way for me to do this. Next - the scanner is easy to take apart and put back together. There are four screws on the bottom under the rubber pads. You just take those out and the scanner will come apart. There are only something like four to six working parts driven by a single motherboard which, I think was only about four inches long and about two inches across. You can take the entire thing apart - BUT - be sure to take pictures on how it was put together. Otherwise you might spend hours trying to figure it back out again. Preview scans take about two seconds to do but the actual scan can take up as long as two minutes. The scanner has a range of 100dpi all the way up to 4800dpi and, of course, the higher the dpi setting the slower the scanner goes. It is a one pass scanner but it is also on a USB 1.0 cable. So SLOW. Amazon STILL CARIES this scanner and you can buy it online there. Just type in the entire name. Last, but not least, there is a locking mechanism on the bottom of the scanner. ALWAYS UNLOCK IT or you will break it. One dummy on Amaon did not do this and - it broke his scanner. Now, again, it is easily taken apart and you can fix the problem, unlock the scanner afterwards, and it is good to go. Anyway - that's it. Oracle VirtualBox->Scanner->Windows XP->Have fun!

[Rasmondist]

I totally understand your dilemma. It sounds like you're trying to do a great job scanning your books, but the clear plastic sheet is causing some unwanted flares. Have you considered using OCR technology? A company called Smart Engines OCR provides amazing OCR solutions that might help you with your project. They offer some pretty cool features, like recognizing and digitizing texts from images, even if they're under plastic sheets. You could give them a try and see if they could help you out. Good luck with your scanning project!