There's a section in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, where quality is discussed. In essence, it says that we all know quality when we see it, but it's a hard concept to define. Our job is to produce quality scans.

Though quality is hard to pin down, a good working definition of a quality scan is one that is readable, clean and has the smallest possible file size. It is also available to students when they need it. You'll need to make a value judgment on quality vs turnaround time -- especially during busy times of the quarter. To accomplish this, you will have to use your judgment to choose the best combination of tools.

Making better originals

By far, the best way to produce high quality scans is to start with clean originals. You can make cleaner originals using the copy machine. In the mailroom, the reserves copy code is 1150. In the copy room, it is 01150.

Starting with original material, you can:

• enlarge the original using the zoom feature
• reduce the effect of dark backgrounds using the copy lighter feature -- the copiers in the copy room work better for this than the one in the mail room
• reduce shadows in gutter margins and improve readability of text near the margins by pressing gently, but firmly on the original as you copy
• separate side-by-side pages by recopying one page at a time and using the zoom feature to enlarge the text

Starting with a copy, you can:

• separate side by side pages using the image separation feature and placing the pages in the feeder with the bottoms of the pages facing left. This feature is only available on the copier in the mailroom.
  

Adjusting scanner settings

If the article has dark text boxes, you can reduce file size and improve quality by increasing the brightness to 100%.

If the article has very light print, you can improve readability by reducing the brightess or increasing the contrast. You may need to play with this.

You can increase scanning quality by scanning at a higher resolution. This might be necessary if the original is very light. Since screens display at under 100 dpi, it won't increase the quality on the screen, but it will increase the printing quality. It will also increase file size, so I wouldn't go above 300 dpi.

Theoretically, you can also use OCR (optical character recognition) to improve copy quality. However, it's not practical. It's extremely time consuming, often has character recognition errors, and sometimes causes problems with readers where only the text or only the image is transmitted. Overall, for our use, quality is seldom improved by using OCR.

Cropping pages

The crop tool provides an easy method for modifying a page layout. You can adjust the margins of one or all the pages in a document, or you can specify margins on a per-page basis. The crop tool allows you to adjust page margins by setting specific parameters or by visually setting page boundaries.You cannot undo a crop operation. Cropping does not reduce file size in and of itself. However, if you've done significant cropping, you can reduce file size by doing postscript compression.

To use the crop tool:

1. Choose View > Single Page to display the document in single page layout. It is recommended that you crop pages in Single Page layout.
2. Select the crop tool from the menu at the left. It looks a lot like a pound sign (#). Select a handle at a corner of the cropping rectangle, and drag to the correct size. If you do not plan to use postscript compression afterwards to reduce the file size, make sure that you leave a big enough margin so that the printer will not cut off the text. If you do use ps compression, it will add blank space to the left and right margins, so you can crop right up to the text. It will not add blank space to the top and bottom margins.
3. Double-click inside the rectangle to bring up the Crop Pages dialog box.
4. Select All to apply the margins to the entire document, or select Pages From, and enter the range of pages to which the new margins should apply. Since our originals aren't usually perfectly regular, it's usually better to crop one page at a time.
5. Select All Pages In Range , Odd Pages Only, or Even Pages Only from the Crop menu.
6. If you are cropping multiple pages, click OK to accept the new margins. The warning dialog does not appear if you are only cropping a single page.
7. Click OK to apply the new margins.

Rotating pages

Acrobat also provides the option of rotating all pages in a document or only selected pages. You can rotate a page from a portrait (vertical) display to a landscape (horizontal) display. Rotation is based on 90-degree increments. A Deskew Image step has been added to the scanning workflow in order to do smaller rotations automatically.

To rotate pages:

1. View the page you want to rotate.
2. Click the Documents tab at the top of the screen and select Rotate Pages....
3. Select Clockwise or Counterclockwise as the direction to rotate the pages(90 degrees).
4. Specify a range of pages to rotate, or select All to rotate all the pages in the document.
5. Click OK, and then click OK in the prompt dialog box for final acceptance.

If you choose to do postscript compression after rotating pages, you may need to rotate the pages again. So double-check the document.

Deleting pages

You can delete pages from a PDF document with the Delete Pages command or by deleting the page’s thumbnail or structured bookmarks. You can minimize the size of the document file by using the Save As command after deleting pages. If you want to keep a copy of the original document intact, use the Save As command, and save the restructured document under a new name.

Important: You cannot undo the Delete Pages command.

To delete a page using the Delete Pages command:

1. Choose Document > Delete Pages.
2. Enter the page range to be deleted, and click OK. Click OK on the prompt dialog box for final acceptance. You cannot delete all pages; at least one page must remain in the document.

To delete a page using a thumbnail:

1. Select the page number box of the thumbnail or the thumbnail itself:
2. Select one thumbnail or a range of thumbnails. When you select multiple thumbnails for deletion, all the pages between the first and last selections are deleted, including thumbnails (in between) that were not selected.
   
3. Choose Edit > Delete
4. Click OK on the prompt dialog box to accept the deletion.

Inserting pages

Acrobat allows you to insert pages in a document by combine one PDF file with another. To do this, you use the Insert Pages command and specify where the new file is placed in the target document. Acrobat only supports combining PDF documents with other PDF documents. At present, you cannot insert non-PDF files (such as Photoshop or Illustrator) into a PDF file without first converting them to PDF.

To combine two PDF files:

1. With the target document open, choose Document > Insert Pages.
2. In the Select File To Insert dialog box, select the source document you want to insert into the target document, and select Open. The standard copyright statement is the 1stpagecopyright.pdf file located in each of the reserves folders.
3. In the Insert dialog box, specify whether you want to insert the document Before or After the specified page.
4. Specify the page, either first page, last page, or enter a page number.
5. Click OK.

Replacing pages

Pages can be replaced in a document by inserting better pages and deleting the sub-standard pages. After doing this, you should use the file>save as... command so that the deleted pages aren't represented as part of the file size.

Reordering pages

Thumbnails provide an easy means for moving and copying pages within a document. You can copy and move one thumbnail at a time or multiple thumb-nails simultaneously.

To move or copy a PDF page within a document using a thumbnail:

1. View the document using thumbnails by clicking on the Show/Hide Navigation Pane icon from the top bar.
2. To move a thumbnail page, select and drag the page number box, or the thumbnail itself, to the new location. A page icon containing an arrow appears at the lower right of the cursor, and a bar appears to show the new position of the thumbnail. Release the mouse button when the bar is in the correct location. The thumbnail page is inserted at that point in the document, and the pages are renumbered.