In our house we have a ton of sheet music books for piano/vocal. I would love to get them digitized so we can use an iPad.
I used to work in printing and have access to industrial paper cutters so I can cut the binding off. The problem is that most sheet music books are 9x12" pages. I’m looking for a small document scanner that I can feed these into. Yes, I know I can use my iPhone and get good quality scans… but we are talking hundreds, if not thousands of pages here.
So I’d love a little document scanner with a paper feeder the can handle slightly larger than US Letter 8.5x11" pages. I’m having a hard time finding something like that. Most don’t list the page size up front… they just assume everyone wants 8.5x11" so you have to go digging into the details/specifications to find it. And the ones that are labeled “oversized” are way overkill… like 12x17", and have an overkill price to match their industrial nature.
I hadn’t thought about that. Thanks! I’ll look into it.
Just did some quick googling and looks like there are options, but of course no prices online. I’ll have to contact a couple of places during the week to see how much it runs.
I guess my one concern (other than the price vs buying some hardware) is if they might object to scanning music books, because of copyright? I am not a lawyer.
Another option… buying an all-in-one printer that does oversized printing and scanning. Looks like that may be more economical than a dedicated document scanner that does oversized documents.
The Epson Workforce Pro WF-7820 is currently $229 on Amazon, for example.
I used to support Deaf students in art classes. They were taught to scan each part of oversized sheets and then use Photoshop to put them back together as a single image. Worked for them as they were usually only dealing a single image or two rather than an entire publication.
Oooo… those are cool. I had in my head that I needed a document feeder… but something like this could be a cool solution. And if the software does a decent job of removing page curl, I could even save the effort of cutting the spine off… though I like to do that anyway and have a spiral binding put on so they lay flat, which is much nicer when playing piano.
So you have the “Fancy Pro”? I don’t think I would use the web cam part, but as a book scanner, I’m intrigued. And it’s currently $89 on Amazon with a coupon, well under their Indiegogo price.
Now I have more to think about… thanks a lot! (I mean that sincerely.)
OK, but now that I think more about that… other than the stand, the hardware is probably less good than the “scanner” camera in my pocket. Rigging up a stand would be pretty easy. I already have a tripod mount.
I’ve done basic document scans with my iPhone before. The page edge detection is great at de-skewing pages (less good when it comes to books where it can’t tell the binding edge very well), but still not great at removing page curl.
Anyone know of apps that would take advantage of the LiDAR in the iPhone Pro cameras to solve that? Searching through the App Store means wading through a lot of crap apps…
the CZUR software is good, especially dealing with curve. Once setup and aligned it just comes down to turn pages and click. Various alignment tools are included. Do look at the different models. I have the Fancy to allow me to do remote sessions with shared whiteboards etc. Your use will differ, but I am sure can be accommodated
If you have a full size tripod, turn the center column upside down and mount your iPhone to that. I started using that setup with a 35mm SLR to make copies back in the film days.
If you need software try the Evernote Scannable app . I’ve used it to scan my pilot logs (approx 1 inch thick) and it does a good job IMO.
Edit: This might even work for you. Hat tip to Jason Snell.
