gscan2pdf crop

Gscan2pdf (version 0.9.32 on Ubuntu 12.04) is my favorite scanning tool. It is both user friendly, e.g. scanners are detected automatically, but also powerful, supporting integrated OCR, scanning multiple pages from a feeder etc.

It also supports cropping the scanned image but the procedure to do that is rather unintuitive. Having had to figure it out twice, I decided to put the simple solution in this post for future reference.

Assume you want to scan an image that is smaller than a full page, e.g. the cover of a pocket book.

• Scan the image.
  


• Use the rectangular selection tool to select the area that you want to keep.
  
  The confusing bit here is that you just draw the rectangle but there is no mouse button or menu item to 'fix' it.
  
• Select 'crop' from the drop-down menu under 'Tools' in the title bar.
  
  
  

That's it. Thanks to 'crop' the resulting pdf file will contain only the area you selected, as shown below.

PDF without cropping

PDF with cropping