Many thanks to all who responded to my request for information on how to make the best use of Neuratron Photoscore. Below is a compilation of those responses with names omitted for the sake of privacy.

 

Greg Shepherd

shep(a)hawaii.edu

Kauai Community College

Lihue, HI 96766

 

Problems arise with photoscore when the sheet music is hard to read it prefers clear printed stuff from software like Finale or Sibelius, as opposed to hand written, even if it gives you the option. Find a nice clean and clear copy of the music, and that should eliminate most problems, but not all. When I use photoscore, i'll still go through the lines making sure there aren't any mistakes, and correcting the ones I find.　

-----------------

Hi Gregory. I use Photoscore Ultimate 7 and when the score that I am reading from is clear, I have quite good results. I turned off having the software read the words, dynamics, etc. They never came out. Just the notes. Software does struggle with complex meters. But something like Renaissance music _ for me the software reads the notes well. Actually, the more dpi _ the worse it does. Your scanner should be set on 300 or 400 dpi nothing finer. I do import into Sibelius.

--------------------

I've used the photoscore lite that comes with Sibelius 6, and have had pretty good luck with it. Maybe 10_20 mins of corrections and I'm good to go. Of course, you have to put the lyrics back in, but that's pretty fast in Sibelius too.

-------------

I feel your pain! I got Photoscore Pro which seems to do a better job. I usually transfer my scores over to Sibelius. It always asks me to do editing before I send them but I've never taken the time to figure out how to do edits in Photoscore. I do have one trick that has worked well at times. I enlarge the original a bit before scanning it. Good luck.

-----------------

I've used the photoscore lite that comes with Sibelius 6, and have had pretty good luck with it. Maybe 10_20 mins of corrections and I'm good to go. Of course, you have to put the lyrics back in, but that's pretty fast in Sibelius too.

------------------

Hello, Greg. I use this scanning software quite a bit, and have learned that there are a few tricks to making it successful _ and when it works, it is fabulous! These are my "tricks."

1. MOST IMPORTANT! When you scan, make sure that the original copy is as straight as possible, or it has a heck of a time reading anything!

2. If the number of staves changes throughout the piece, scan only sections of the piece accordingly. This is particularly true at the beginning of the score since Sibelius wants to know how many staves there are. If it gets confused the beginning, things are a mess! (Like if there is a solo at the beginning, and the choir comes in later.) I often begin my scan with page 2 & scan the first page as a different document.

3. Let Sibelius pick the instruments when you transfer the scan into your notation program even if you need to change them all later. (Sometimes it may even pick the wrong clef, but this is easily fixed.)

4. Scanning at 400 dpi is usually fine _ better than 300, I think.

5. Choosing black and white rather than gray scale is better if you have a clear copy. Don't scan in colour. Occasionally, I have had to "find" parts of the music _ like a piano part, it put on the bass line or something, but if you have had success in everything looking like "music", all of the parts are usually there somewhere! I was worried about my pencil markings on some of my older scores, but these really didn't seem to be problem other than  sometimes some type of symbol was substituted for my chicken scratch. There is definitely some clean_up involved, but for the most part, it is always easier to deal with the scan than to start from scratch. Lyrics are often the hardest thing to get right, (like when it read EVERY "m" as "rn", and many times I have just trashed them and re_entered them. It's really fast if you type everything into a work processing document first, however. Sibelius deals with that beautifully, and usually separates the syllables correctly, too. Lastly, I would just recommend that you have the latest version of the scanning software because the newest ones are definitely better than the older ones.

Oh, one more thing, sometimes I have found that asking Photoscore to read a pdf file has proved more successful than asking it to scan something. Hope I've given you some ideas you can use.

-----------------

I own photoscore ultimate for sibelius 7 and love it. You do not need any special scanner. I have found that enlarging scores and making them darker will help the transfer. It is quite rare that a score will scan 100%. There is an amount of time needed to invest in corrections. For me, the time is worth it as I make part CD's for my choir and then use those same parts as testing tracks (a la Music minus one) later in the marking period.

------------------

I have Photoscore pro and I really love it. I open pdf's that I have downloaded. I open Photoscore, and then I click through the directions for opening pdf's. I have opened CPDL scores many times. Once the score shows up in photoscore, I then do some editing before I transfer into a sibelius document. I always fix rhythm mistakes (too may or too few notes in the measure), and usually don't fix text mistakes. I fix pitches too, but don't bother with articulation or dynamics. I work from the scanned image at the top of the page, and also a hard copy_ but that isn't essential. if you are having problems, it could be because the original image isn't great, or you are working from photoscore lite which sometimes screws up text. I really have only had one or two times when there was so much fixing to be done that I gave up and started from scratch. I hope this helps, and I would also be interested to see what your other responses have been. I have been an ambassador for Sibelius and photoscore and have taught the program to music teachers. if you have further problems, or you get stuck in a specific place, let me know. I can also scan in the score for you and send it back in Sibelius if you want.

-------------------------

Yes, I've had success using Photoscore iwith some projects but I have found it to be far from perfect. I've re_set my expectations so I am less frustrated. For the most part it does save me time from transcribing a score from scratch but it is still frustrating and terribly inconsistent. I still spend a lot of time cleaning up the gleaning errors of the program misreading simple things like "cresc." Some of the best use I have found is scanning instrumental parts independently to build a full score that I may want to re_arrange. But multiple rests become a headache. I think they  have a long way to go in developing the program. I use a mid_level scanner. I would be interested in the results of your posting as I've often wondered if a high level scanner would improve the results, or just make the problems worse.

-----------------