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I am looking to get the best pdfs for sheet music possible. I would be interested in hearing about software (free preferred), and techniques that will give superior results.
Looking for best way to go about scanning so that the copy can have a darker print than a light original, to clean up the background so it is “whiter”, remove blemishes, etc.
For sheets already in the pdf format am interested in the same as above along with being able to straighten a crooked image.
Also any other editing that would be beneficial such as typing in chords, blocking out incorrect chords and the like.
Any tips and techniques appreciated.
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03-10-2017, 12:10 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-10-2017, 12:12 PM by GraemeJ.)
Well, I would suggest Adobe Acrobat 8, which is available for free from Adobe's own website. I can't recall the link, but I have posted it here a couple of times. That will cover most of your requirements. For the others, then check out Serif's PagePlus Starter Edition, also free and a Google search will pull up many sites offering this program..
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For scanning hard-copy materials, I have used CamScanner with very satisfactory results.
It's an Android app for your smartphone.
It won't completely remove things like water stains on a page, but it suits my needs.
I could be wrong, it happened once before.
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I use Libre Offfice (free) to scan from my HP Multi function printer.
After a bit of experimenting with changing the brightness and contrast settings in the scan driver, I achieved a custom setting that will faithfully scan old and yellowed scores as well as pristine scores and always give a nice black and white image in Libre Office.
I then crop out the unwanted wide borders etc and resize (with aspect ratio preserved) so it fills the entire page (probably don't need to this with the auto crop function in MobileSheets, but I do anyway in case I want to print a hard copy).
I then select 'Export to PDF' function, and job done!
Because I am using a flatbed scanner, I don't need to straighten crooked edges and if I want to do any editing I will either edit the original before scanning (to correct wrong chords, misprints etc) or use the annotation facility in MobileSheets for preference issues.
So far I have scanned in 4 of the Busker books (over 400 scores) in 5 days.
Alan.
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For enhancing and tidying up existing PDFs, I use "Ap PDF to Image" to put each page into bmp format.
I use a graphics program to adjust levels, straighten and remove any blemishes. I often redo old sheets which are too crammed in their engraving, i.e. no real space between staffs, to make them more readable. I use the text tool (with Opus chords font) to redo the text chords if I need to make them larger or clearer (or correct any mistakes).
When finished, I convert the images to grey scale, then create a PDF using PDFArea's "Image to PDF converter".
I also recommend the free Adobe Acrobat 8 if you wish to add your own songbook bookmarks.
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Maybe a bit off-topic: you get by far the best results by exporting a PDF directly from the software that created the score.
It might be worth considering if re-typing a score in MuseScore / Finale / Sibelius / LibreOffice ... takes so much more time than optimizing a scan of a printed score.
MuseScore and LibreOffice have a built-in PDF export, Win10 has a built-in PDF printer, PDFCreator is a free PDF printer for other cases.
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Thanx for all the input. As for Musescore, I know it used to have a pdf function but I can't find it anymore on the new version. Where did they hide it? Or is it gone? Free Cute software works good.
