Hello,
I have about 4000 pages of scanned documents, which are 200dpi x
200dpi .TIFF files. Right now its a pain to read them because I have
to open each .TIFF individuall. I would like to convert them into
.pdfs.

One thing I would like to do is reduce the resolution, so that the
.pdfs take less space. The second I would like to do is merge the
pages (each is a book, so about 300-400 pages) into one .pdf....
Can this be done relatively easily with an Acrobat script?


Details:
files have names like:
page1.TIF
page2.TIF
page3.TIF
page304.TIF
it would be relatively easy for me to rename all th efiles so they
were named
page001.TIF
page002.TIF 

if necessary....

I'll pay $5 for a good description of how to automate this in Acrobat,
or $10 for a sample scrip that I can very easily adapt to my
particular needs.

Thanks kindly,
Shawn

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Request for Question Clarification by endo-ga on 15 Nov 2002 18:08 PST

Hi,
I can imagine that this would be very tedious to do manually.
Would it be acceptable if I provided a solution that required freely
downloadable third party software rather than just using Acrobat
itself?

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Clarification of Question by fuciek-ga on 22 Nov 2002 08:14 PST

Sure, if the software doesn't put any stamps on the pages (e.g., it's
not a trial version).
I have figured out how to take the .TIFF files, put them all in one
folder, and then using Windows & Fax viewer, print them all at once
using Acrobt Distiller as my printer. That works more or less...I am
realizing that if I reduce the quality too much the documents aren't
legible...it's sort of a catch-22.

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Request for Question Clarification by endo-ga on 22 Nov 2002 10:03 PST

Hi,
I found a pretty easy way of doing this, assuming that:
- you can order the files in the order you want to put them in the
book i.e. not necessarily rename them, but when you type dir in a
command prompt, they appear in the order you want them to be in the
book
- you can group the files on a per book basis
- and you can download 2 free small programs (yes no stamps are left)

You will have the ability to resize them as you want, even though as
you note, you might lose legibility

Are you are running a version of Windows?
If the above is ok, let me know and I'll show you how.
Cheers,
endo

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Clarification of Question by fuciek-ga on 24 Nov 2002 12:57 PST

Sure endo, if the program syou have have a batch interface that allows
me to reduce the resolution (so resize refers to file size not actual
size of image), that would be OK. I'm not so optimistic the solution
will be any better than what i have, but i might as well pay $5 to
preserve my reputation in case i want to ask more questions...
best,
shawn

If you simply want to combine a large number of TIFF files into a
single pdf, you may want to try ImagePDF
http://www.apexinternetsoftware.com/imagepdf.html

I have no idea of what platorm you are on, but ImagePDF supports
Linux/UNIX, MAc and windows.

You can automate it to fit your needs using the command line options
specified at http://www.apexinternetsoftware.com/imagepdf_commandline.html,
or simply use the GUI.

It seems to support all the features that you wanted, see
http://www.apexinternetsoftware.com/imagepdf_features.html

Hope this helps,
Stephen

Do the books have pictures/charts - and how important is the
formatting? I would recommend using an OCR - or Optical Character
Recognition software to convert the scanned text into characters. Then
you can save these scanned documents to a text file, a word document,
or even an Adobe Acrobat document based upon text, not pixels. This
type of Acrobat file is smaller and better.

There are many OCRs that can even keep the pictures and converted text
together – saving a lot of room on the hard drive – and making crisp
and easy characters to read. Reducing the resolution – as you
requested – will make the images poor quality – like a fax that has
been sent a few times. Do you really want to read fuzzy text?

If you insist on reducing the image size, I would use Adobe Photoshop.
It can batch process an entire folder on your hard drive, and it has a
very good engine for converting images.


 Travis