What is the fastest and reliable way to scan old paper magazines into digital form? (lemmy.fmhy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by One_Dollar_Payout@lemmy.fmhy.ml to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Hello. I'm not sure if it's related in any way to piracy, but I don't know yet of a better place to ask this question on Lemmy, and people often search for PDF magazines on pirate sites (like those from megathread). I have some old magazines, which I would like to scan - page by page - into digital form (for now for personal use) and merge scanned pages into PDFs for convenient reading. Some of these magazines have hundreds of pages each, so I would like to convert them to digital both fast (preferably a few pages in one minute), reliably (without blurred text and images in some places on each page), and in best quality possible. Do I need a professional scanner (for example in a multifunctional office-grade laser printer)? Could a decent portable scanner do the job just as right? Or is my phone's camera with an appropriate scanner app completely sufficient for that? I would like to read your thoughts about this.

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[-] Bukka@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

I think the fastest and reliable, but definitely not the cheapest way, would be a document scanner like a Fujitsu IX something. you'd basically cut all the pages so that they're a format the scanner can accept, stuff then all in there and hit scan. A few seconds later you have a pdf. Using a flatbed scanner is probably the slowest approach, but the one with the highest quality. The cheapest way would be taking photos with your mobile, there are frames that you can buy (or make yourself) where you put your phone in on the top and then place the page below, so that you'll get a consistent quality. light can get tricky with these.