Converting PDF score to Sibelius?

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sus4
Posts: 336
Joined: Tue Dec 26, 2006 4:05 am

Post by sus4 » Mon Apr 30, 2018 8:23 pm

Is it possible to convert a PDF score back to Sibelius? I originally wrote this score in Sibelius and for some reason I lose it, but I found a PDF score of it.
Thanks.


MikeLyons
Posts: 1631
Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2016 7:20 pm
Sibelius Version: Ult. 2024.3.1/7.5
Operating System: Windows

Post by MikeLyons » Tue May 01, 2018 6:34 am

Depending what version of Sib you have, and how many staves are on each page, you can use PhotoScore. The lite version that comes with Sibelius will only handle 12 staves per page, but if you can stretch to Photoscore Ultimate (£199), you can do many more. Text recognition (somewhat surprisingly) is quite poor, but as long as the pdf was produced at a reasonable resolution it gives acceptable results with notation.

Be aware that there will still be a lot of work to do to get a decent result in Sibelius and you should use PhotoScore's editing facilities to make most corrections to timing, key sigs, time sigs and other things that affect the engraving. Don't let PhotoScore auto read pages, do that manually. If it is only a one-off or short piece, it might be worth just setting it by hand.

Alternative software such a PDFto Music )from Myriad) is also available ($49/€40). I can't comment on how good it is as I have never used it but I know some people like it.
Sib 6.2, 7.5 and 2023.6, Windows 11, 32GB RAM, 16TB 7200RPM Storage, 2TB SSD, Note Performer 3.3.2, EWQLSO, EWQLSC, Harmony Assistant and some others. mike@mike-lyons.co.uk

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