Ability to split a scanned book that has two pages per scan

Thanks to the app developer for posting this, small files and throughput are totally free. No malware far as I can tell 🙂
https://www.sejda.com/split-pdf-down-the-middle

I used to do this in Acrobat using the reformating tools and to be honest it was a PITA to do it that way. Add to that that Adobe changed the Acrobat UI every versions for many years and it was impossible to find the tool locations using old habits. Add to that that Adobe refuses to add shortcuts to Acrobat (Apple version at least) and actively  blocks Apples system level shortcuts from working on menu item commands (seriously Adobe, i first complained about this to an Adobe eveangalist at a training day in 2004 and even he said "Acrobat is a dog" and its' not developed in the same group as the (then) Creative Suite of apps).  

This makes it so much easier and they have dozens of other PDF tools avialble for free or by paid account for more serious use volumes. 

There is a java program called "Briss" that does this automatically.

Briss

well, just done the same job as yours in windows xp.

before done i have 3 ideas:

1.open-face pictures-->pdf-->use adobe to split and resort

2.open-face pictures-->use other soft to split left-right and resort-->pdf

3.open-face pictures-->pdf-->adobe crop left-right seperately-->pictures-->use other soft to resort pic-->pdf

for

1: need to learn some adobe scripts

2: need perfect soft

3: need resort soft

since i have ACD See 3.1, it has rename menu, so i choose #3

1.open-face pictures-->pdf-->adobe crop left-right seperately AND save it like: name_1_NUM.jpg, name_2_NUM.jpg. In win xp, "sort as name" helps nothing coz NUM is on the tail

2.open ACD See, select all the name_1_NUM.jpg and right click menu : rename

3.change the name "name_1_##.jpg" into "##_1.jpg"

4. same to name_2_NUM.jpg files

5.since resort done, just need pic-->pdf

-------but anyway, push adobe to solve itself is the best way

hi there,

The tool called, "Briss" is an excellent tool for doing this. You can scan a book with two pages per scan and then open the PDF in Briss.  Then select the sides of each page that should be even pages, then select with another box the alternating  odd pages.  You don't have to select every page:   I have attached an example of what it looks like to this post.

Briss will automatically split the PDF into even and odd pages.  Then you can save the PDF again, run OCR on it, etc.

Here is a link for Briss (NOTE:  It is a cross platform - Windows, Mac, Linux - Program that is built using Java.  So on Mac OS X, you double click the JAR file, on windows, the EXE, etc.):  http://sourceforge.net/projects/briss/files/release%200.0.13/briss-0.0.13-bin.zip/download

NOTE - Briss is FREE.

Hi folks,

Sorry, I've puzzled through this, and as far as I can figure out this only allows you to print every other page.  You've cropped out all of the pages on the left or right side, and I don't get how to make those also print as pages.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Jon

I have a 600 page book scanned in the two page manner you described. (It was an old book that is no longer in print and can't be purchased, so I borrowed my friend's copy to scan.) Following is what worked for me. I will try to give step by step instructions for a novice, so please understand that if you are an advanced user, it is not my intention to insult your intelligence. There are probably better ways to do this. This is the kind of instructions that I appreciate for myself.

Now, let's try it:

1. First, copy your original scanned book file to another folder on your computer and use this copy to experiment with. Then if there is a problem or if something goes awry, you will still have your original scan.

2. Open your scanned book in Adobe (I am using Adobe 9.0 on a 64 bit Win 7 machine) and click on the "Pages" icon on the upper left of the black screen.

3. Click on the first page of your scanned book, then press and hold the "Shift" key on your keyboard and scroll to the last page of your book in the left pane and click it. This will select all the pages.

4. Now that all the pages are selected, click on the little "gear" icon that is located at the top of the pane above the selected pages and then select "Crop Pages" from the menu. From the dialog box that appears, experiment with entering measurements in the top, bottom left and right boxes until the image is centered and will split evenly at the center of the page break on the scanned book. (When I scanned my book, I aligned the left page with edge of the scanner with each scan, and the result was that the center of the scanned book was not the same as with the center of the scanned image since the scanner bed was a little larger than the book layed face down, thus resulting in the necessity to crop the image to make the center of the book even with the center of the image to be split.) As you enter different measurements in the boxes, you can see a preview of the results on the image. It might be necessary to "grab" the "Crop Pages" dialog box and move it to another area of your computer screen so you can see the scanned image. When you have the image cropped to your satisfaction, click "Ok".

5. Now we must set up the printer dialog to correctly print your book to an Adobe file. (Not on paper) (Note: When you are finished printing your book to the new Adobe file, it might be necessary to go back and change all your print settings to their original status.)

6. On the very top of your screen on the left side, click "File" and from the resulting menu, choose "Print Setup". From this dialog, click on the little downward pointing triangle to the right of the printer name that is highlighted. Click on "Adobe PDF"

7. Before closing the "Printer Setup" dialog box, click on the small downward pointing triangle in the highlighted box next to the "Size" setting. About halfway down the list of various paper sizes, click on "Half-sheet Letter", then to the right in the Orientation area, click the radio button for "Landscape" and then click "Ok".

8. We are now ready to print to an Adobe PDF file which will literally split your two pages per sheet book into a one page per sheet book. From the same "File" menu as before, click on "Print".

9. About 2/3 down the"Print" dialog box, click on the highlighted bar next to "Page Scaling" and then click on "Tile all pages" from the displayed menu. Note: The preview image shown on the right side of the "Print " dialog box should now show you an image of just where the pages will be split. (Reminder: When you are finished printing your book to the new Adobe file, it might be necessary to go back and change all your print settings to their original status.)

10. You are now ready to print your book to a PDF file with individual pages. Click on "Ok" to print your file. From that you can print a hard copy or whatever.

11. Hope this works as well for you as it did for me.

Hi -  I tried Chrystal's suggestion, ie., print the pdf as a pdf, and select "split large pages".  The problem: there was no option to "split large pages"...  These were the options under page handling:

None

Fit to printable

Shrink to printable

Tile large pages

Tile all pages

Multiple pages per sheet

Booklet Printing

It seemed like "tile all pages" or "tile large pages" might be the solution, but I couldn't figure out any settings that would work.  Ideas?

Thanks

A much easier way is to print the PDF to a PDF, and select to split large pages in the page handling part of the print options.

This method isn't completely automated but I think it's easy and quick.

1. With your original PDF opened use the export > images command to export all your pages to a new directory.

2. Go to that directory and copy all the files and paste in the same directory.  Vista will rename the copy to "??? - Copy" but the key is the files will be in order. If you have WinXP you may have to copy the files twice because I think XP will put "Copy" first in the file name.

3. Select all the files, right click on them and select "Combine supported files in Acrobat..".  Now you have one PDF with each page duplicated back to back.

4. Use the crop tool to crop the left side of all the odd pages.

5. Use the crop tool again to crop all the even pages.

Now you should have one PDF the way you want it!

Hi dsmallz, I have the same problem. Were you able to find a bit more "automated" way than cropping each page manually? I have quite a big file scanned in this way - it would take ages to crop all the pages manually.

Thanks for the info.