Manual and automatic alignment of pages
View Patent ↗A printing machine has a computer program for aligning pages in a book and printing the book. A user scans pages of a book into a controller or computer where the pages are converted into a file that is independent of the platform that created the documents such as portable document formatted (PDF) pages. Each PDF page comprises content areas of text or graphics or both and non-content areas surrounding the content areas. The program does not remove the non-content area for any placement purposes and temporarily crops the page to determine the size (and position) of the content area. During automatic alignment, the program operates on the files to temporarily crop or remove peripheral, non-content areas and generate cropped PDF pages of the content areas on the pages of the book. The cropped PDF files include one image although it may encompass text and graphics. The program may operate in automatic or manual mode.
1. A method for generating a portable document format (PDF) representation of a book having a plurality of pages, comprising the steps of:
scanning the pages of the book to produce scanned pages;
generating original PDF pages from respective said scanned pages, said original PDF pages corresponding to respective pages of the book, wherein said original PDF pages have content areas of text or graphics or both and non-content areas surrounding the content areas;
creating on each of said original PDF pages, a bounding box of minimal size to enclose all of the respective said content areas, each said bounding box defining a respective cropped PDF page;
further comprising using one of said cropped PDF pages as an alignment standard for said feature;
wherein said using further comprises identifying a largest of said cropped PDF pages as said alignment standard;
selecting a feature common to all of said cropped PDF pages;
wherein said selecting further comprises applying one or more predetermined alignment rules; and
further comprising:
warning a user when said bounding boxes are of different sizes; and
allowing the user to define new alignment rules;
discarding said cropped PDF pages;
aligning all of said original PDF pages in a PDF representation of the book using said selected feature to prevent an appearance of page jumping between succeeding pages in the PDF representation of the book.
2. The method of claim 1 further comprising displaying said cropped PDF pages used as said alignment standard during said selecting.
3. The method of claim 1 further comprising displaying the PDF representation of the book, following said aligning.
4. The method of claim 1 further comprising printing the PDF representation of the book, following said aligning.
5. The method of claim 1 wherein said feature is a corner of said cropped PDF pages.
6. The method of claim 1 wherein said feature is a page number, a header, or a footer.
7. A method for generating a portable document format (PDF) representation of a book having a plurality of pages, comprising the steps of:
scanning the pages of the book in a duplex mode having front and back scans to produce a first set of scanned pages from said front scans and a second set of scanned pages from said back scans;
generating first and second sets of original PDF pages from respective said sets of scanned pages, said original PDF pages corresponding to respective pages of the book, wherein said original PDF pages have content areas of text or graphics or both and non-content areas surrounding the content areas;
creating on each of said original PDF pages, a transient bounding box of minimal size to enclose all of the respective said content areas, each said bounding box defining a respective cropped PDF page;
further comprising using one of said cropped PDF pages of each of said sets as an alignment standard for said selecting of the respective said feature;
wherein said using further comprises identifying a largest of said cropped PDF pages in each of said sets as the respective said alignment standard;
selecting different first and second features of said cropped PDF pages, said first feature being common to all of said cropped PDF pages of said first set, said second feature being common to all of said cropped PDF pages of said second set;
wherein said selecting further comprises applying one or more predetermined alignment rules; and further comprising:
warning a user when said bounding boxes are of different sizes; and
allowing the user to define new alignment rules;
discarding said cropped PDF pages;
aligning all of said orignal PDF pages in a PDF representation of the book using the respective said selected features to prevent an appearance of page jumping between succeeding pages in the PDF representation of the book.
8. The method of claim 7 further comprising displaying each of said alignment standard cropped PDF pages during said selecting of the respective said feature.
9. The method of claim 7 wherein said selecting further comprises:
displaying all of said cropped PDF pages of said first set, then all of said cropped PDF pages of said second set; and
receiving a user choice of said first feature, during said displaying of said first set, and a user choice of said second feature, during said displaying of said second set.
10. The method of claim 7 further comprising displaying the PDF representation of the book, following said aligning.
11. The method of claim 7 further comprising printing the PDF representation of the book, following said aligning.
12. The method of claim 7 further comprising manually selecting said features.
13. The method of claim 7 wherein at least one of said features is a corner of the respective said cropped images.
14. The method of claim 7 . wherein at least one of said features is a page number.
15. An apparatus for generating a portable document format (PDF) representation of a book having a plurality of pages, comprising:
a scanner capable of scanning the pages of the book to produce scanned pages; and
a controller operatively connected to receive said scanned pages, said controller being programmed to:
generate original PDF pages from respective said scanned pages, said original PDF pages corresponding to respective pages of the book, wherein said original PDF pages have content areas of text or graphics or both and non-content areas surrounding the content areas surrounding the content areas;
create on each of said original PDF pages, a transient bounding box of minimal size to enclose all of the respective said content areas, each said bounding box defining a respective cropped PDF page;
wherein said controller uses one of said cropped PDF pages as an alignment standard for said feature;
wherein said controller identifies a largest of said cropped PDF pages as said alignment standard;
select a feature common to all of said cropped PDF pages;
wherein said controller applies one or more predetermined alignment rules to select the feature common to all of said cropped PDF pages; and
wherein said controller warns a user when said bounding boxes are of different sizes; and
allows the user to define new alignment rules;
discard said cropped PDF pages;
align all of said original PDF pages in a PDF representation of the book using said selected feature to prevent an appearance of page jumping between succeeding pages in the PDF representation of the book.