How to digitize paper books?

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Colox
Posts: 2
Joined: 22 Jul 2026, 07:06

How to digitize paper books?

Post by Colox »

Have paper books that might be interesting for others. What is the best way to digitize them?
vardoger
Posts: 3
Joined: 17 Sep 2026, 04:58

Re: How to digitize paper books?

Post by vardoger »

First, you have to make pictures of every page, for instance with a flatboard scanner.
Second, you should use an OCR (Character recognition) Program to transform the pictures into a text format, like .docx or similar. A common OCR Program is Finereader.
Third, you should format and proof-read the recognized text, insert illustrations, tables and so on, using a text processing program.
Fourth and final, you should export the text to PDF or epub with a text processing program, like Word or Atlantis. There are free programs for every step, too.

A more easier way to produce "Picture-PDF" books is the using of the free program Scan Tailor instead of the second and third step. It "formats" the scanned pictures immediately. In the last step join together the processed pictures with a program like Acrobat Reader to a single PDF and add an OCR layer withe the same program.

There are much more detailed instructions available, if you want.

Vardoger
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