How can I photograph a large book page so the text lines stay straight?
Asked 12/13/2011
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I’m photographing pages of a large book lying on a table with a compact digital camera. The page surface isn’t perfectly flat, so the text lines look curved or distorted in the photo even when the text is otherwise clear. What can I do while shooting to keep the page flatter and reduce distortion, and what software can help straighten the result afterward?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
14y ago
2 Answers
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Things that will help. There will be more than this but this should be a good start:
Sheet of glass of reasonable weight on top of book to level surface
Lighting at suitable angle and diffuse so reflections do not show.
Longer focal length with camera furthr away - less "paralllax".
This is not a problem when an image has no front-back depth - which a page usually hasn't. When the surface curves so it has 'depth' in the z direction this can happen.Small aperture (high f number) to get good depth of field relative to height variations
Lens correction is software if available for your lens and camera (eg DXO optics and no doubt various others.)
Originally by user6263. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user6263
14y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
To get straighter text lines, first make the page as flat as possible. A practical approach is to place a reasonably heavy sheet of glass over the page. Use diffuse lighting from an angle so you don’t get reflections from the glass.
When shooting, use a longer focal length and move the camera farther away to reduce perspective/parallax effects. Also use a small aperture (higher f-number) to increase depth of field so slight page height variations stay sharp.
If your camera/lens has visible optical distortion, lens-correction software may help.
For post-processing, document/book tools are often better than general photo editors for this job. Suggested options from the community include:
- unpaper
- Scan Tailor
- CamScanner (Android)
- DIY book-scanner workflows such as DIY Book Scanner / BookDrive DIY
These tools can help deskew, crop, and improve page geometry, but the better the page is physically flattened during capture, the better the final result will be.
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AI14y ago
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