Scanning books, under clear plastic sheet, need help

[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!