Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Scanning Scores to PDF for Tablet Display?

Rather than hijacking this existing thread, I though that I'd start a new one for my question.

I use the ForScore app on an iPad to display my piano scores. It works quite well for me, but it's not always easy to get a "clean" scan of the music. (Note: I currently use a separate iPad app for scanning, using the iPad's camera, then copy to Dropbox, and load into ForScore from Dropbox).

I was wondering how others here scan their music into PDF's for display on their iPad or tablet?

Unless there's a better method, I'm thinking of getting a flatbed scanner for this purpose, and was wondering whether anyone could recommend a good one (preferable with a link)? The main things I'm looking for are, in order,:

1. provides a clean, sharp scan (letter size paper)
2. scans directly to PDF, and
3. (nice to have, but not an absolute necessity) scans directly to iPad, or better yet, into ForScore (if that's possible)?

My computer is running Windows 7, if that makes any difference.

Thanks!

I have an older Canon Lide LED scanner that is still serving me well.
Runs off of USB power. I use it to scan music into MusicReader 4 PDF software.
Hasn't let me down yet

Newegg has them.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ption=canon+Lide&N=-1&isNodeId=1

YMMV

Regardless of the scanner, what matters most is the quality of the original score.

Faults in reproduction can be caused by off-white or discolored paper, by folds or creases in the paper, or by faded inks. A good original counts for more than anything else.

Note that you can edit the scanned copy with Photoshop and thereby clear up a great many faults. But this can be tedious when processing a large number of sheets.

For converting scanned images to PDF, I use PDFill Tools free edition, available HERE.

I'll add something in from that other thread.

I've been using a Zeta overhead scanner. It's fast and you can scan through an average-sized book of music in 5-10 minutes. It is not perfect, but the scans are readable in ForScore on my iPad. It has a lot of built-in correction that doesn't work on music, because those algorithms depend on it finding text, and when it looks at music it says "picture." So the scans are a little wavy, although it deskews the pages well. It doesn't belong to me. List price is $13,900. Probably not what you were looking for.

https://www.zeutschel.de/en/produkte/scanner/farbscanner/zeta.html

The problem with the cheaper flatbed scanners is that they usually scan up to letter or legal sized at most. Most sheet music is bigger, so maybe you can get it on the scanner just right, maybe you can't. It's a big pain. There are a gazillion cheap letter-size scanners. Bigger than that the price skyrockets. The Plustek A300 is about as low as you can go and have oversize and bookedge capabilities. You can probably find it for about $1,500.

http://www.amazon.com/Plustek-271-BBM21-C-Opticbook-A300/dp/B001PPORGC

We use a bunch of these where I work. They aren't the greatest build quality and getting service on them in almost impossible. But they are the cheapest thing that meets our criteria, so we keep buying them. People seem to like the software that comes with them. I would not take a chance on a used one.

I'm intrigued by this Fujitsu, but haven't actually tried it. People where I work had issues with it that aren't relevant to using it to scan sheet music. Fujitsu has a way better rep than Plustek and it's half the price. Still, it's not cheap.

http://www.amazon.com/Fujitsu-ScanSnap-SV600-Overhead-scanner/dp/B00IZMGGTE/

Another alternative is to build or buy a scanning frame for a camera. Like this:

http://www.amazon.com/StandScan-PRO-Lightweight-smartphone-documents/dp/B0096SXDVU/

Haven't tried that either. There are some cheap USB scanning cameras that do the same kind of thing. My concern would be getting consistent results. I didn't have much luck with my iPhone so far and these things are not much different. But the price is right.

http://www.amazon.com/Ziggi-HD-High-Definition-Document-Camera-CDVU-04IP/dp/B008DBF5Z8/

I scan a decent amount of music and print it later. I don't use it with an ipad, but I imagine as long as you can easily produce a pdf, then you can easily use it on an ipad. The major issue I have faced scanning music over the years is using standard 8.5'' x 11'' scanners. Almost all music books are oversized, which means you can spend a bunch of time moving the page around until you get a clean scan with no cut off notes. In some books, there is simply more content than 8.5'' x 11'' and you will lose content.

I bought one of these a few years ago and it has worked fantastic: http://www.amazon.com/Brother-Printer-MFC-J6520DW-Wireless-Scanner/dp/B00EPY0JAI . I always just set it for the full 11 x 17 scanning option and then crop down the pages after I'm done using software. The cropping takes a few seconds after I'm done. Using this approach, I have never lost notes on edges and I've always had very high quality scans. Additionally, it has a touch screen which I find makes it easier to do larger scan jobs, I can just push the button on the device when I'm ready for the next page. It also automatically creates pdfs.

What? $13,000 and $1500 scanners for sheet music?

I've been using an HP all-in-one for years and having no trouble scanning for forScore.

Serious question - Why won't any cheap flatbed scanner work when a $400 all-in-one works?

Best place to look for the $13,000 scanner is at the library. Libraries buy most of them. Some libraries buy lots of them. They probably don't pay list price. Libraries like them because it shifts patrons from making paper copies, mashing the books on the copiers, and all the general mess that comes from having to have and maintain a bunch of copiers. (No consumables.) That said, all libraries, if they have a Zeta or two, set the rules on how it's used.

The $1,500 scanner is a book edge scanner - you don't get distorted pages and broken book spines. That might not be relevant for most sheet music, but it does also scan oversize volumes. Libraries like these scanners a lot, too, but usually they're used behind the scenes for ILL.

So no, those scanners are not just for sheet music. We have scanners and digital camera setups here that cost six figures used for archival and preservation work. Those would be great for scanning sheet music, too.

The oversized all-in-ones are something I wasn't aware of, so that sounds like a great cost-effective option for anything that will lay flat.

My goal is to get all my books of music onto my iPad. If I was just scanning a couple things I'd be willing to sit and move an oversized page around on a letter-sized scanner until I got it right, but that doesn't scale. So it all depends on what you want to do.

FWIW --

Don't confuse an iPhone 6 with a real camera. [Maybe I should soften that a bit -- I don't want to start a flame war!<g>]

I recently bought a Nikon D3200 DSLR (the "entry-level" camera).

With the "kit" zoom lens, stopped-down to f16, at 55mm focal length (=80mm on a "full-frame" camera), I get good corner-to-corner sharpness photographing 8x11 pages. Use a tripod, and preferably a remote shutter release.

With 24 megapixels, it's not quite as high-resolution as a scanner, but it's pretty good. Certainly adequate for music scores.

Post-processing in Picasa helps turn the background white, and the notes black.

So, if you have a camera in the house, it would be worth trying.

iPhone 5 or better, Windows/Nokia Phone with one of those Carl Zeiss lenses, or an Android with good camera using Microsoft Office Lens app. The app has algorithms for auto transforming, sharpening, lightening, contrast, etc. to fix the image immediately. Save to PDF straight to their free One Drive cloud storage - then it can be opened or transferred to all devices - tablet, smart phone, or computer.

Try it, I think you'll be surprised at the speed, convenience and quality.
If you're doing a lot of sheet music, you might want to use a boom stand and desk lamp.

I've scanned all of my favourite albums straight into my iPad with Genius Scan (a free iPad app) and had very acceptable results.

I position the iPad's camera over the edge of a coffee table. I put the sheet music on a box on the floor under the camera to get the page at the right distance from the lens. This eliminates any hand-held camera movement and only needs to be set up once for each scanning session.

Genius Scan optimises the scan for black-and-white print, and exports the multi-page file as a PDF directly into ForScore. It's worth a try - it is quick and simple, and it certainly saved me buying a bulky and expensive scanner.

(I also found an unexpected bonus in having had my albums spiral bound - the pages lie flat for scanning.)

Thanks to everyone for your thoughts and recommendations on this.

MarieJ - You may have saved me some money. My main gripe in doing my scans using the app (regardless of the app used) was holding still enough to get a sharp image from the camera. It often takes me a few tries, but eventually works. Still, it's frustrating.

I think that I'll try your method before investing any $$$ into anything.

Thanks!

I've clearly got to back and try some of the iOS scanning stuff again just to see if I can get it right.

Bert,

I scan sheet music to pdf files using a dedicated book scanner Plustek Opticbook 4800 which can flat scan right to any edge of a thick bound book.

http://tinyurl.com/oqpo2pb

It comes with scanning software that can output B&W, greyscale or colour to 600dpi.

Connection is USB2

Ian