Quick Start Guide

1. Open ScanTailor & select "new project" to begin with a new set of images.

2. Browse to select the directory that contains the images you wish to process

3. Select the images as required.

4. ScanTailor will default to using the same directory appended with an "out" directory for processed images but you can select a different directory at this stage if you wish.

5. At the next stage it's necessary to set the DPI level. Click on "all pages", set or use drop arrow in ‘custom’ to select the level. For accurate content selection use a lower setting (300 x 300). For digital camera images you may need to measure the physical dimensions of the area of which the picture was taken and then divide to get the DPI (dots or pixels per inch).

6. Set the orientation of the first image, if necessary click "apply to" and select "all pages" to propagate that setting to the rest of the images.

7. Click to "split pages". If the image is of two pages of a book for instance ScanTailor will attempt to split the image into the two pages. Click on the > arrow to have ScanTailor batch process split for the remainder of the images. Splits can be set using the page layout section.

8. In all cases individual pages can be inspected in the thumbnails to the right of the main page, clicking on a thumbnail will load that page to the main area and allow for adjustment of various parameters.

9. Select "deskew" if it’s needed and ScanTailor will attempt to straighten up text and images based on the edges of the text/image. Once again use the > arrow to batch process as needed and use the thumbnails to quickly check each page.

10. Click on "select content" and batch process (> right arrow). Check thumbnails and adjust by selecting that thumbnail and altering main page as needed (click and drag edges of the content box). If no content is selected a content box may be manually entered by selecting that image and right-click in the main window, add content box and adjust as needed. Likewise one may remove a content box from a page by right-click and delete.

11. Then move to "page layout" and adjust the various parameters according to your requirements. ScanTailor defaults work well for most cases.

12. Finally click on "output" and select the type of image output desired. Black and white will produce a clean output image for simple text and line drawings. If some text appears to be "missing" try adjusting the line thickness to see if it appears (increase). Once set this may be applied to all pages and run through the batch process. Alternatively for images with photographs etc one may select "mixed" or even colour/grayscale. In all cases it’s wise to check the thumbs after processing particularly in black & white or mixed mode to ensure that all the required content is included.

13. Files will be saved as tiff's in the selected directory and may be further manipulated or used as required from there.

See also

Video Tutorial