Three Cheers for the free vFlat app for de-warping iPhone photos of book pages

As a side note, I do more or less the same with old books, but as I’m lazy and not too much of a perfectionist, I do it in another way.

With scanner:

  • Scan the pages: with an OptiBook 3600 with a hacked driver to avoid delays under a Windows XP VM
  • Batch rename/reorder pages, as sometimes I only do odd or even for speed.
  • Drop the images into Abbyy Finereader 15 under Windows and let it “do the magic” of improve images, rotation, page division.
  • Correct some not-so-magic changes Abbyy has done.
  • Generate a PDF with MRC compression and desired image quality.
    (Yes, all of this is Windows-only, and I’ve not found an equivalent way to do it with a Mac).

If a book is too old, or it is too damaged, you can end up with a destroyed book after scanning. In that case I use iPhone:

  • Use ScannerPro (Readdle). This application has been superior in page cropping, removing curved pages and so on. For two years or so, it has been a piece of crap but sometimes still useful. Crashes and crashes and other issues.
  • Export a full image quality PDF.
  • Continue in windows with Abbyy Finereader 15 PDF editor.

However, I’m awaiting [this preciosity] (ET24 Pro - Incomparable Professional Book Scanner | Indiegogo). Currently it is stopped at Customs. And I think ti will change my entire scanning flow and force me to re-scan yet scanned books. Or be a 400 euro piece of garbage. Time will say.