Years ago I once wrote a little tool in Java called bookbuilder, where you could turn the pages manually, make a photo and then run an automatic process on all images to build a searchable pdf.
I used https://boofcv.org/, an impressive Computer Vision library in pure Java, still exists and it is pretty fast, too.
It was able to detect the page contour, deskew it, flatten the image and remove finger contours by matching the skin tone, then build a PDF with integrated invisible OCR Layer without any user interaction. I remember that I was working on line slope detection with some kind of watershed algorithm to improve the flattening part.
Fun project, I wonder if I have the source code laying around somewhere... even the download page is gone today. This was long before I went open source with all of my little side projects, because I never thought it could be interesting for someone else :-)
RE ....There is a whole community about this topic at: https://diybookscanner.org/..... The actual f(book scanner ) forum is down at present. It has been down for a few weeks . We are working to get it back up.
We need a little help bringing the forum back online. If anyone wants to help and has some solid PHPBB experience, send me an email - danreetz@gmail.com
The store seems to be down as well. Also some of this hardware is quite old such as the model of digital cameras used. Do we still really buy old point and shoot cameras? Would something like pixel phones and their excellent cameras do better in 2023?
I've been interested in book scanning for a while. I think I remember seeing your software! I built one of the early versions that I saw on the site, and then happened to meet Jonathon Duerig and do some waterjet cutting for him a few years ago.
When I saw the linear bookscanner the first time, I realized it was upside down. If it were suspended, and able to move itself, then all the issues about not knowing the mass of the book, and dealing with friction could be avoided. Counterweights could keep the force constant, and it would be moving a known mass when scanning any book.
BoofCV is incredibly cool, thanks for sharing! It's unfortunate I didn't know about it before today, I would've definitely invested time to learn and hopefully contribute back (there's still a chance, but at this point it seems to cover everything I've ever heard of, and more).
I just spent 30 minutes clicking through and inspecting every example.
Years ago I once wrote a little tool in Java called bookbuilder, where you could turn the pages manually, make a photo and then run an automatic process on all images to build a searchable pdf.
I used https://boofcv.org/, an impressive Computer Vision library in pure Java, still exists and it is pretty fast, too.
It was able to detect the page contour, deskew it, flatten the image and remove finger contours by matching the skin tone, then build a PDF with integrated invisible OCR Layer without any user interaction. I remember that I was working on line slope detection with some kind of watershed algorithm to improve the flattening part.
Fun project, I wonder if I have the source code laying around somewhere... even the download page is gone today. This was long before I went open source with all of my little side projects, because I never thought it could be interesting for someone else :-)