[X] My Assistant

It's easy to disassemble a v37 and v39 EPSON scanner since they're flat and have little to no difficulty reassembling back together. It's big-ass scanners like a v550 or v600 where reassembling is near impossible because trying to attach that blue flat-wire cord is a pain in the ass.

It might be comparatively easier, but I'm pretty bad with my hands. I'd like to solve this in a non-mechanical way if possible. If my only options are "disassemble" and "buy a new scanner", then I'll try it. But I suspect I'd end up buying a new one regardless.

There's always asking for a PC technician for dissemblance.

What are some tips to make sure you get that good scan every time? Also what are good quality levels to put the scan at? Naturally you want them to be as high as possible but when scans take 30 seconds and the books are 50 pages it starts to add up, so what's a good level for speed and quality?

I always just used 600 DPI. I think it took about 1 minute per page, but maybe I just had more patience.

If you save the files as BMP it should go slightly faster (but take up a lot of disk space). Then you can bulk-convert them to PNG with imagemagick while you're doing other stuff.

What are some tips to make sure you get that good scan every time? Also what are good quality levels to put the scan at? Naturally you want them to be as high as possible but when scans take 30 seconds and the books are 50 pages it starts to add up, so what's a good level for speed and quality?

Make use of your time and get to processing that one page while the scanner is working, build that rhythm up.

Thanks fellas. I'm new to scanning but I have experience typesetting. I've got a few untranslated mangas around so I get those scans and find a translator.

Late reply, but...

What are some tips to make sure you get that good scan every time?

Hmm, make sure the pages are completely flat on the scanner, put something black and hard (a plastic sheet works) on the reverse of the page to prevent bleed-through (doesn't work perfectly for very thin paper or very dark reverse pages though), don't let the scanner set any levels for you or crop the page, you are almost certainly going to get better results doing those yourself.

Also try and make sure the scanner bed is as clean as possible. hair, dust, paper fibers, fingerprints and sometimes even glue can get onto the scanner glass in between scans, so try to clean it between pages if possible.

Also what are good quality levels to put the scan at? Naturally you want them to be as high as possible but when scans take 30 seconds and the books are 50 pages it starts to add up, so what's a good level for speed and quality?

600 dpi is about the sweet spot for quality and speed. It still takes time, but it depends a lot on your scanner. Mine is supposedly "fast", but it still takes up to 30 seconds. One thing you can do is restrict the area that is actually scanned to make it marginally faster.

Overall, this is a time-consuming activity, so just put on a long youtube video or a podcast, and try to enjoy the flow.

Make use of your time and get to processing that one page while the scanner is working, build that rhythm up.

I might the odd one out, but I tried that and it didn't work for me. I found out that I work a lot faster if I just scan the whole book first and then edit it.

Maybe it's because I'm not working with loose pages, so the shift from holding the book down, then putting it aside to edit the page ruins the flow.