Hi! I’ve been scanning some yearbooks using a scan and OCR but I am having a difficult time figuring

Hi Nathanael,

The thought that one can click/tap the scan button and be done is sadly not realistic. 

All documents to be scanned need to be adjusted to account for many issues; too many to go into for this quick reply. Nonetheless, it boils down to 1) the quality of your scanner, 2) the quality of your scanning software, 3) the quality of the images being scanned, 4) interference due to non-image content affecting auto-adjustments built into the software, and 5) (sorry I have to add this but it's part of the package) knowledge of the scanning process by the user. 

However, to answer your initial question: why are your pages so contrasted and washed out: The reason for this is you are scanning a page with photos of varying qualities AND the white page at the same time. Auto-correction software is always looking for a balance and trying to find a mid-point to have equal amounts of very dark and very light. IF you were to set your scanner to scan just one image and bring the pre-scan frame to just at the border of one photo, it probably would come out mostly OK. But, as soon as you bring in the white page, all auto-settings go out the door.

It's not just with scanners; if you ever have the opportunity to take photos of an old steam engine, be sure to get close enough for that engine to take over 75% of the image, then take the photo. What you'll find is that the black engine will not be dark grey. For the reason for this, see above. Again, the computer algorithm is trying to balance things out. 

Two things you could do would be 1) Do not scan from within Acrobat. There are too many things in between you and the scanner. Use the scanning software that came with your scanner. And when you do the prescan, set the frame for the photo to one photo. Then, once you have the Auto setting set, then return the frame to cover the entire image and CHANGE NOTHING ELSE. Then scan. 

BTW, scan the images as TIF and save them into a folder on (say) your Desktop (easy to find). The file sizes will be very large, but once you PDF them, the sizes will go down. However, because you have nine images on each page, the final size will still be on the large size. After you complete the scanning, drag all of the images onto the Acrobat icon in your Dock or Startup Bar (Windows). Acrobat will ask if you want to join all of the files into one document, so say yes. Because you saved the files as TIF images, any text will automatically be OCRd. One extra comment: The very first pages will be something like "yourimagetitle.tif." The 2nd will be something like "yourimagetitle.tif (2)," and the third "yourimagetitle.tif (3)." Once everything is done, take the first document and fix the name to "yourimagetitle (1).tif." This way, when Acrobat arranges everything in order, the first page will still be the first page.

If you really want to get into proper scanning, check this out.

http://photosbycoyne.com/Gary's_Help/Scanning/clean-scanning.html

Good luck!

Contined .... figuring out why the images are turning out like this. It seems like they are either over contrasted or washed out. Any way to fix this with Adobe Acrobat, or is it a problem with the actual scanner?