How do I get text from a book onto my laptop? Having been inspired by the new Make It Crafty digital release -Alice in Wonderland - and some of their DT cards I would like to use some of the text from the book as background on a card. Can I download a book onto my pc? I have an iPad but have never downloaded a book onto it and would not know how to get some of the text from there onto my lap top.
If I wanted to get text from an actual physical book into digital form, the only two options I can think of are to scan it (and I think 300 dpi would be fine) or take a photo of the page and upload that. But that treats the text as an IMAGE (ie you can't copy and past bits of text) so all you can do is print the image. And I suspect you might have to do some post-processing on it for the colour to be right (the white background WHITE, not greyish or yellowish)
You can download AIW from the free digital book places, like project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11 but the problem is the text is more e-book text, rather than proper printed book text. Still, if you process it, like copy and paste the text into some program or another and change the font, you can make it look a bit better. And just to add, if you printed in on newprint paper it would have the texture of book paper, I think, better if it was an old pad that was slightly yellowed
Just another option - Google books has online versions that are shots of actual pages. Using whatever you have that does it (and on a Mac there is a program called GRAB that lets you draw a box and take a screenshot, no idea what it is on a PC) grab a page, save it as a jpg and print that. Those pages have the look of a real book AND include the photos
I googled Alice in Wonderland online and came up with http://www.online-literature.com/carroll/alice/1/
where I can copy and then change the font/format in either Word or Studio and print on an appropriate colour paper and distress/ink up.
How do I get text from a book onto my laptop? Having been inspired by the new Make It Crafty digital release -Alice in Wonderland - and some of their DT cards I would like to use some of the text from the book as background on a card. Can I download a book onto my pc? I have an iPad but have never downloaded a book onto it and would not know how to get some of the text from there onto my lap top.
TIA for any help.
Have you considered copywrite issues? Why not contact the publisher and ask them - you might be pleasantly surprised, you never know.
Had a quick check, as Lewis Carroll died in 1898 his works are now in the public domain for us to do with as we please. As I'm only going to be using a small portion as a background I don't think I'll worry about it.
Just another option - Google books has online versions that are shots of actual pages. Using whatever you have that does it (and on a Mac there is a program called GRAB that lets you draw a box and take a screenshot, no idea what it is on a PC) grab a page, save it as a jpg and print that. Those pages have the look of a real book AND include the photos
The only issue with a screenshot is that it is likely to be 72 dpi and so not crisp and clear - although "old book pages" may not NEED to be crisp and clear, IYKWIM
And yes, PG books all are in the public domain, so when looking for something to use safely, this is certainly a good place to start.
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Originally Posted by BathBelle
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