Programs to convert TIFF documents to PDF and copy/paste pages between PDFs?

[Porthus]

I borrowed a technical book but before returning it, I scanned chapters using Microsoft Office Document Imaging. Each chapter of the book was saved as a multipage TIFF file, but before saving each file, I used the OCR function of the program to recognize text, so that each .tif file saved has OCR information. After returning the book, I noticed that the TIFF files saved are usually very large: one containing 11 pages is over 64 MB, while another containing 22 pages is 266 MB. All the scanned book chapters -totalizing 172 pages- occupy a total 1.56 GB on disk.
After that, I found a book with 636 pages available for download as a PDF file and I was surprised to see that it has only 34.6 MB size! From now on, I'll prefer to scan future books to PDF file format as my scanner allows me to save scanned documents as searchable PDF file format.

I wish to find good programs (or one single program), preferably free programs, which allow me to do one or both of two things:

1. To convert TIFF files with OCR information to searchable PDF files.

2. To remove pages from a PDF file and replace them with pages from another PDF file. That is, I don't need to edit the text in the PDF document, I just need to remove pages, and to insert pages from another PDF (to copy pages from a pdf and paste them on another pdf).  In Microsoft Office Document Imaging this is easily achieved, it's easy to copy pages from a multipage TIFF document and paste them in another TIFF document, inserting them in the exact right place and to remove the pages we want to replace. Now I want to do the same thing in PDF documents. This is useful when scanning all sorts of documents, because sometimes, after the scan is finished and the file is saved, you find that a few pages of the document were badly scanned, and you'd want to replace only the few bad pages, rather than rescanning the whole document. This is also useful if you don't have the time to scan an entire document, you need to stop the scan, save the file as it is and resume it later, later on, you'd scan the remaining pages, save them as a new file and insert the pages of the new file in the previous file, which would result the same as if you merge the two files into one.
 

[quaxo]

Scanning a copy of a book is against copyright law. Forum policy doesn't allow help in dealing with illegally copied material. Review the forum rules:

http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,58736.0.html

[Porthus]

Scanning a copy of a book is against copyright law. Forum policy doesn't allow help in dealing with illegally copied material. Review the forum rules:

http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,58736.0.html

About the book I scanned, it is sponsored and published by an health institute belonging to a pharmaceutical company and is distributed freely to dental practitioners, which I am. It is not available for sale on stores. My colleague from which I borrowed the book is also a dentist and didn't pay for the book, only representatives of the pharmaceutical company visited his clinic and offered him the book. Two weeks ago, I had contacted via email the health institute which published the book, requesting specific informations on how to acquire it in my country, but they didn't reply for some reason. Because I had to return the book to my colleague and couldn't wait any longer for the email response, I decided to scan the book.

Anyway, the questions I posed in first post are generic, they're not related with the copy/scan of a specific book or any other book (the book I mentioned was merely an example to illustrate one major disadvantage of TIFF documents over PDF documents), the questions are specifically about programs used to convert and edit document files and are valid for any book or document, including those for which you have the publisher's authorization to do a copy, free publications, tenancy contracts for backup purposes, enchiridions, documents authored by yourself, etc.

Inclusively, a few years ago I bought a book which is very heavy, and suppose now that I'd like to scan it to convert it to a portable document file so that I could read it in travel without carrying an heavy weight with me. Would it be illegal too?

[quaxo]

Inclusively, a few years ago I bought a book which is very heavy, and suppose now that I'd like to scan it to convert it to a portable document file so that I could read it in travel without carrying an heavy weight with me. Would it be illegal too?

Yes. Open the cover and look at the copyright. I'm sure it probably says something like "unauthorized copying prohibited without prior written consent of the publisher".

It wouldn't matter if they paid you to take the book, it doesn't mean they've given you permission to copy it unless it says on the book somewhere that it's ok to do so. The intellectual rights of the document still belong to the company.

Generic questions or not, it's against forum policy and we won't explain to you how to do what you're trying to do. No sense arguing. That's the way it is.

[Porthus]

Yes. Open the cover and look at the copyright. I'm sure it probably says something like "unauthorized copying prohibited without prior written consent of the publisher".

It wouldn't matter if they paid you to take the book, it doesn't mean they've given you permission to copy it unless it says on the book somewhere that it's ok to do so. The intellectual rights of the document still belong to the company.

OK, this argument sounds reasonable, concerning most books, I admit you may be right. However, I'm sure that not all books are subject to copyright limitations. See the example given below.

Scanning a copy of a book is against copyright law. Forum policy doesn't allow help in dealing with illegally copied material.

Do you mean every book? On my first post, I mentioned "a technical book". However, not all "technical books" are subject to copyright limitations. I'll give as an example this free publication called "Prontuário Terapęutico"(Therapeutic Enchiridion) which is published by an official organization in Portugal called "Infarmed" (National Authority of Medicines and Health Products) and inclusively is freely available online for download on Infarmed website.

Generic questions or not, it's against forum policy and we won't explain to you how to do what you're trying to do. No sense arguing. That's the way it is.

Are you saying that I shouldn't get here any kind of information related to PDF files editing and conversion of TIFF to PDF because now it should be assumed that I will use that information to do illegal copies of a book? With this I cannot agree. The questions I asked are not even related to document/book scanning or copying, they are just about programs used to convert document files and edit pages in PDF files.  In fact, I have different types of documents in my computer (such as a backup copy of a tenancy contract, scanned letters, etc.) which were saved as multipages TIFF files and now I'd like to convert them to PDF files.

[quaxo]

Are you saying that I shouldn't get here any kind of information related to PDF files editing and conversion of TIFF to PDF because now it should be assumed that I will use that information to do illegal copies of a book?

It's not assumed. You already clearly stated you were doing so.