Scanning Hardcover Book "Das Pl@ymate Buch" (The Pl@mayte Book)

[halvar]

This week I bought a Canoscan 9000F Mark II.

Now I want to scan the book "Das Pl@ymate Buch" (The Pl@mayte Book).

Since I am a Linux user, I do not use the software that came with the scanner.
I use Xsane for scanning, gimp for editing and imagemagick for batch processing.

Scanning the book is not easy, since it's a hardcover and larger than A4.
The book does not lie completely flat on the scanner because of the binding. This leads to a shadow along the spine.

I scan with 300 dpi and save the images in pnm (bitmap) format. The files are about 25MB.
Then I open these images in gimp, crop them and save as JPG-files.
The JPGs are about 2MB.

I will keep the pnm bitmap files. If I decide to process images later I want to have the best source quality.

Here are the first scans:













Before I continue scanning:

• Does anybody have tips or suggestions?
• Should I change the file size or resolution?