Scanning Recipes into Evernote - pdfs? images?

[happy1 0]

I have tons of recipes I'm wanting to scan into Evernote (ScanSnap)...

What are the pros and cons of scanning as pdfs? jpegs? some other format I'm not aware of?

Thanks for any help!

[Candid 167]

I've been doing the same.

I decided to go with letting Scan Snap add searchable text to my recipes. It does take longer, but I like that it will exist in the PDF. It's been helpful in pulling out an ingredient list or two so far. Something that I wouldn't be able to do with an image only scan.

My recipes are 99% from magazines, and thus far I've scanned in 736 recipe files (some files hold more than one recipe). I think I have at least 100 more files to scan in. Most files (around 75%) are one page, some with information on both sides, some with information only on one side.

First, be prepared that if you are working with magazine paper that not everything is going to go through the scanner the way it should. You should plan to be around while scanning to stop the scanner if that starts to happen as magazine paper can also tear easily.

I already had my recipes organized and I suppose I could have simply scanned all the pages in one group (appetizers) into one big file, but the files would have been huge and less useful. So I opted to scan each recipe or set of pages into separate files.

Somethings that I think helped:

I would separate pages that needed a duplex scan vs. a simplex scan. This way I could scan a large batch of pages and program the button on the scanner to scan whatever that was. I'd do that while I was watching TV and sort to two different folders.

I also program the scanner not to rotate the pages as I found it would do that when I didn't want it to.

I also trimmed down to the individual recipe if possible. If there is information on both sides this may not be possible. I also am fond of the Cook's Illustrated family of magazines and found I had to trim their margins down a little as they are too wide for the scanner. I use one of those coupon cutters to help speed this process.

Once I was scanning a folder, I would try to scan all the pages that were in the same size range at the same time. I'd just place other sizes into stacks or flip them forward in the folder as I went through. This helped speed up the process.

Some folks will suggest scanning to folders, but I found it easier to scan right into Evernote. While I can't change the numeric file title, I can change the note title and while I'm at it add tags. I've found doing this at a later time works better for me than trying to scan and title at the same time. This maybe because I tend to do these task when I've fairly brain numb.

Finally, I would have learned to save the recipes in a pending folder until my title and tag session as sometimes the scanner wouldn't get the ingredient measurements. I'm not exactly sure why that happens, but it does. Sometimes I can scan again and it will get them, sometimes I need to use my flat bed scanner.