Correcting perspective on book page scans made with a DSLR

rover

Hi everyone! I am doing a project for school that requires me to "scan" some old books by shooting the pages with a DSLR-type camera. The setup is kind of like a poor-man's planetary scanner, but unlike a real PS, it doesn't have fancy proprietary software to "flatten out" the curves in the pages (near the binding and in the middle) that distort the text. Since part of my project involves processing the images with OCR into ebooks, I need the lines to be as straight as possible for accuracy's sake. I figure photoshop has GOT to be able to handle distortion correction like this, but I am clueless on how to do it. So far, I have tried to get close by cropping the pictures with a perspective correction, but the pages are still unreadable near the binding and in the middle. Is there a way I can create a distortion correction map that would tell Photoshop which parts of the the image to correct and how?

PS. in case I've been less than clear, here is some software that might do what I'd like to do n photoshop, but it's not released yet. http://ikkoon.com/html/FlatBOOK.html

thanks for looking!

AgfaD2 · Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2006 10:25 pm Post subject:

That first example looks horrible! Just my 2Cents but All I can say is work with layers and adjustments/levels/ clone stamp/ healing brush, and most importantly use WARP!

Hope my quick answer was enough.

rover · Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 7:57 am Post subject:

Thanks for the pointer to the warp tool - I tried it out and it's a huge help. You're right about the example on that link I posted - the processed image is not impressive when viewed against simple tools like warp Big Grin

. On the other hand, if it is like other planetary scanner software that "automagically" evaluates each image and centers, deskews, crops, warps, and levels it, that would be impressive to me. I'd like to find a way to create some similar processing logic in adobescript, maybe based on the book's position and attitude on a grid. For now, though, using warp, crop, curves and levels should get me closer to my goal. Thanks again for the tip!

AgfaD2 · Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 11:18 pm Post subject:

Glad I was a help. Photoshop is such an extensive application that my instructor & I both give tips, tricks, & ideas to one another.

Your human eye and applied knowledge is better than any auto-manuplitation tool around.

Been pondering & asking the questions to such software developers are they using applied science to there applications. Who knows.

However more of a resonable answer is to this problem (that I am sure alot of adobe users have, and other people in general) Would be a x: y: angle perspective and input the data. Have them write the code & use the applied tools to make it work.

I can allobrate on this subject, but I have to run.
Intresting I ask?

poiscas · Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2006 7:51 am Post subject: Horrible !! really ??

I think "horrible" is quite too much !

I did not try this soft. but if it is fully automatic, with crop, skew correction...etc, it is not horrible...it is quite impressive ! Birthday Big Grin

I am not an expert in image processing, and maybe with this image (http://ikkoon.com/html/images/FlatBOOK/Capture_00007.jpg)
you can obtain an image better than this one (http://ikkoon.com/html/images/FlatBOOK/7.jpg)...but, me i can't ! Big Wink

AgfaD2 · Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2006 11:45 pm Post subject:

Poiscas: Horrible was my personal expression, as my personal thoughts (thats why I said "my 2Cents")

However look closly next time on your lighting (if you are the photographer)

If you want the same final output print you need some gradient work with layers, levels, curves, etc. etc. For me there is too much shadow and color shift/gradient shift.

Wait! Maybe!

I have an idea, lets have a few people from this website see what we can give you? Hows that sound?

Elobrate if you will on final output.

Thanks!

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