Lockdown! Article

[nbk2000]

Since Stoic brought up the subject of Lockdown!, I thought I'd bring up this idea I've been having for a while, and get your feedback.

See, there's a lot of timely information of interest to the criminal element, but it's scattered throughout all the various cop-oriented publications. I thought it'd be nice to gather this stuff up every month, and make it available to Lockdown! members, as a collection of the various articles compiled together into one PDF for that month, along with additional commentary by me regarding specific points in the article.

So, I thought I'd test out the idea using one of my usual reads "Guns and Weapons for Law Enforcement", and rip one of their articles and convert using ABBYY fine-reader for OCR, prior to conversion to PDF.

When I did it as strictly image captures of the page, even with PS alteration to reduce, it still came out to almost 1.3MB. But, using the ABBYY OCR, it's only 218Kb. :)

I didn't lock it since I'd like someone to take a swipe at the file with that PDF compression program (which I haven't gotten yet), and let me know if it works and, if so, if it made any sizeable difference in file size.

I think it'd be sweet if every month the pig-catering publications were getting ripped to PDF, passed around the criminal community (for free), to be used against them.

They don't get a dime, and it's all going to be turned against them, so what could be sweeter? :D

This would also be good for non-US members, since they'd get a leg up on the cop technology that usually starts in the US, before being exported to the euro cops.

I'd also do magazine and newspaper articles if, in my opinion, they'd be of interest to the Lockdown! membership. ;)

Anyhows, here's the article URL, download and tell me what you think of the idea.

http://nbk2000.freeyellow.com/LaserArticle.bin

Right click, choose "save target as...", rename the .BIN extension to .PDF, download, and read.

[Rhadon]

I like this idea. Regarding the creation of the PDF file, I'd suggest the following for best results:

Scan the pages at 600 DPI in grayscale, convert them to b&w images in photoshop using a noise filter such as Floyd-Steinberg. Clip all images to equal size, re-import them into FineReader having the adjust image orientation option switched off. Apply an OCR and export the batch as a PDF file composed of images with the OCRed text beneath the images.

If you don't want to have a bitmap PDF, you'd get better results if you export the recognized text into StarWriter (or MS Word if you prefer that ;)) and position the images "by hand". Although this will increase the filesize, I'd use a higher image resultion as in your first article.

As far as I know, a compression can only be applied to a PDF file if it has been created with the first method I mentioned. In any case, keep on with the good work :).

PS: The PDF compression utility is on the FTP. It's located in the recent folder, its filename being silx pdf compressor (cracked) - by rhadon.zip.

[Stoic]

NBK have you received an email I tried to pass on to you via Anthony?

[nbk2000]

Damn, dude, at least give him a day to get it to me, OK? ;)

I know where to get the silx file, I just can't connect to the FTP, using my ISP. :(

I think 600DPI is beyond my scanners capabilities. It's from '98, mind you, and at 150DPI takes a nit of time. I'm trying to get these scans out the same month I get them in. ;)

Is the Flyod-Steinberg filter OEM with PS7? Or is it a plug-in?

[Rhadon]

Okay, if you want the compressor, send me an email, I will then send it to you (filesize is 1 MB or less).

My scanner is old either, but not as old as yours. One full page at 600 DPI in grayscale takes a bit more than a minute, but that's fine if you do something else while scanning.

I'm not sure whether Floyd-Steinberg is available in PS at all, I prefer Corel Photopaint and just assumed that PS does also include this filter or a similar one. But there must be some sort of noise filter for converting grayscale or colored images to b&w. Any PS freaks out there :)?

EDIT: Perhaps you can use www2ftp (http://www.web2ftp.com) to connect to the Forum FTP.

[nbk2000]

I can't log-in using a proxy, since that'd expose admin privlege access to the FTP to outsiders, so the proxy does me no good either. Thanks anyways.

I'll e-mail you with my addy.

PS does have a decolorizing filter, which turns color into monochrome, if that's what you meant.

[Rhadon]

PS does have a decolorizing filter, which turns color into monochrome, if that's what you meant. Yes, that's what I mean. But there are different kinds of conversion filters, and some will yield better results than others. In the PDF file, those images created with a noise filter will look best - but only at high resolutions (600 DPI). At lower resolutions (300 DPI; don't know about lower resolutions), you'll get best results when using different filters for different parts of the page: The noise filter for images, and another filter for the text (I don't remember its name right now and can't look it up due to computer problems).