[kevinturcotte]

How difficult is to create an E-Book/PDF file of a book (With pictures, in color)? I have a LOT of video game strategy books, and I'd like to have them on my E-Reader, but most aren't available. I have a scanner, so getting the pages into my computer wouldn't be a problem .
I'm NOT looking to sell them, distribute them, or make any profit on them, they'd just be for my own personal use.

 

[Yoda-DBSguy]

Pretty easy with adobe acrobat pro (reader/writer).

 

[Stewart Vernon]

Depends on what software you have...

I thought Microsoft Office ships with Acrobat creator functionality... and some other desktop apps do too... so even without Adobe Acrobat Pro you can "print" to a PDF from your software.

On a Mac, OS X has "save as PDF" built-in to the print drivers... so you don't have to buy Acrobat to create a PDF of anything you can print from an app.

 

[kevinturcotte]

Depends on what software you have...

I thought Microsoft Office ships with Acrobat creator functionality... and some other desktop apps do too... so even without Adobe Acrobat Pro you can "print" to a PDF from your software.

On a Mac, OS X has "save as PDF" built-in to the print drivers... so you don't have to buy Acrobat to create a PDF of anything you can print from an app.

I'm running 64 bit Windows 7 Ultimate. Only Office software I have is Libre Office.

 

[kevinturcotte]

Okay, it's working. Painfully slow, lol, but I figured on that. A free version would be nice. One thing I'm wondering about, and I don't THINK I can do, but is it possible to make the images text searchable? The actual words in the image/page? I've uploaded a page to show what I mean. Is there a way to make it so that I can use my PDF reader software search for say Warrrior, and it would pick up on all the Warrior words in the image? Probably not?

 

[EdJ]

How difficult is to create an E-Book/PDF file of a book (With pictures, in color)? I have a LOT of video game strategy books, and I'd like to have them on my E-Reader, but most aren't available. I have a scanner, so getting the pages into my computer wouldn't be a problem .
I'm NOT looking to sell them, distribute them, or make any profit on them, they'd just be for my own personal use.

You can convert just about any existing document to an e-book format with a FREE program called Calibre. It really works very well. I convert my stuff to .mobi format for Kindle, but it will work for converting to Nook and others as well.

 

[Stewart Vernon]

I'm running 64 bit Windows 7 Ultimate. Only Office software I have is Libre Office.

I'm using OpenOffice on my iMac... but since the operating system has the built-in support to save as PDF it matters less. That's one thing I found pretty cool when I moved back over to Appleland.

 

[Stewart Vernon]

Okay, it's working. Painfully slow, lol, but I figured on that. A free version would be nice. One thing I'm wondering about, and I don't THINK I can do, but is it possible to make the images text searchable? The actual words in the image/page? I've uploaded a page to show what I mean. Is there a way to make it so that I can use my PDF reader software search for say Warrrior, and it would pick up on all the Warrior words in the image? Probably not?

There are probably others, but I typed "free ocr" into Google and found:

http://www.onlineocr.net/

It purports to do what you want and convert an image to a Word (or similar) document... you could then convert that to an epub with free software or perhaps a PDF and it should be searchable.

 

[bobnielsen]

I use VueScan on my Mac to control my Canon scanner. It will create multipage pdf files from scans.

 

[trh]

One thing I'm wondering about, and I don't THINK I can do, but is it possible to make the images text searchable?

My scanner has an option where all text is searchable.
For converting documents into PDF, I use the free CutePDF software. www.cutepdf.com.

 

[billsharpe]

My HP all-in-one includes Scan to PDF capability that includes creating a searchable PDF.

OpenOffice's various modules include an export to pdf menu choice.

 

[The Merg]

My scanner has an option where all text is searchable.
For converting documents into PDF, I use the free CutePDF software. www.cutepdf.com.

I used that as well for the longest time until I started using the PDF creator in Office and also the Adobe Acrobat Pro PDF print driver. I was very happy with it.

- Merg

 

[Steve]

The free Do PDF printer driver is excellent. Of all the free PDF converters I've tried, It produces the best quality images from embedded JPG's in the original document.

http://www.dopdf.com/

 

[Marlin Guy]

Another vote for Cute PDF, but I use the pro version. Quick, light, simple, and easy.

 

[kevinturcotte]

Do PDF doesn't seem to want to let me do a batch convert of files into 1 pdf.
Cute PDF almost worked, but it doesn't allow to rotate the images, so some are sideways.

 

[trh]

I've never tried to batch several PDF files into one, but with your software, why don't you create your book(s) in Libre Writer (getting all your scanned images in the proper place/orientation) and then 'print' to PDF?

I also thought Libre had a built-in PDF file creator?

 

[bobnielsen]

I also thought Libre had a built-in PDF file creator?

It does.