I mainly use PSP for retouching scans, either of yearbook pages or books. In most cases, particularly books that are not letter-size (few are), once the pages are scanned the process involves two custom steps:
First create and save a selection marquee, then select the Move tool
- straighten the page horizonally
- load the selection marquee
- Turn on Edit selection
- Move the marquee to cover the page
- Turn off Edit Selection
- Shift-R to crop to selection
- Ctrl-S to save, Ctrl-F4 to close
It doesn't sound like a big deal, but when you're doing it with 150+ images it adds quite a bit of time! Some of the images are obvious -- half a degree or more. But I'm routinely correcting .25-.35 of a degree. I don't know that until I have set the horizontal line -- and at that point the only thing left to do is click the check mark to make the change.
I know about setting grid lines, but I can't do that. Usually it is white pages on a scanner white background, so the page edges show up as slightly gray lines. Even if I use something like red grid lines they are just too distracting.
Anybody have any suggestion on a way to guesstimate the angle?
By the way, the book scans are basically for personal use -- these are books about 30+ years old that won't ever be on Kindle because they're still under copyright, the authors died years ago, and the books are not the type that would draw a large readership if they were republished, so no one is going to try to determine the current copyright holder and negotiate electronic publication rights. I mainly do this because the type size is difficult for me to read and I can enlarge it on a tablet.
