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VueScan? Just works.

I have no stake in this. I am just a happy customer.

Wanting to be able to scan a document wireless from a multi-function printer?

It's not FOSS, but VueScan (scanning software) does an excellent job of this, and is excellent in general. It's very actively maintained and seems to support just about every device out there. I bought a license many years ago and have been happy with it since.

https://www.hamrick.com/

In Windows 7, run driver setup with compatibility settings to WinXP and as Administrator.
This usually works.

This usually doesn't work

Or get VueScan http://www.hamrick.com/.

they want $90 for slide scanning, or I can scan under Linux for free

I've watched my parents throw away perfectly good printer/scanner combos that were only a few years old because there were no drivers beyond XP.

In Windows 7, run driver setup with compatibility settings to WinXP and as Administrator.
This usually works.
Or get VueScan http://www.hamrick.com/.

Have you checked out VueScan? Works with an amazing range of scanners.

$80 (source) is almost as expensive as Windows itself.

Must post anonymous, as I moderated. Check out VueScan.

Need to post AC, as I moderated. Check VueScan. Happy customer.

I'm just a happy customer....

I can't say for printers (but if they're PostScript, I'm sure generic drivers will work). However, for scanners, do take a look at VueScan. It's not all that expensive and the amount of scanners that are supported is staggering. It also works on Linux and OS X... Since I don't use Windows any more, but do have some speciality scanning devices (still on SCSI, so you can guess the age), VueScan on LInux did all I needed an more.

Have you checked out VueScan? My father was in the same situation as you and we found VueScan to be the solution. We use it under Linux, but I'm sure the Windows version is good too. Of course, it's still more money than just sticking with what you have.

Take a look at VueScan. Best $79.95 I ever spent on software and the only single proprietary software I use on Linux. I'm just a happy customer, I have nothing to do with the creator and/or company.

Thanks, but I think the right solution for me would be to invest those $80 in some better scanner :-)

Take a look at VueScan. Best $79.95 I ever spent on software and the only single proprietary software I use on Linux. I'm just a happy customer, I have nothing to do with the creator and/or company.

I'm far from a 7 fan, but regarding scanners, I always suggest VueScan (http://www.hamrick.com) Worth every penny I spent on it. I haven't used it on Windows, but it works fine on OS X and Linux.

I *still* have OS 9 plugins running in Photoshop on OS X 10.6 that still work - my scanner

Have you looked at VueScan? It has a Photoshop plug-in now.

I have VueScan, and run it. It is a steaming pile of goat-droppings. The ONLY thing it has going for it is that it is SLIGHTLY better than HP's OS X software for my ScanJet 8250 (which otherwise is a great scanner).

VusScan regularly crashes, loses it's configuration, tries to drive the scan head beyond the home position (which causes the toothed-belt to make an absolutely sickening sound). It also refuses to FORCE QUIT, doesn't know how to use my scanner's built-in transparency adapter (even though it tries). I could go on and on...

I *still* have OS 9 plugins running in Photoshop on OS X 10.6 that still work - my scanner

Have you looked at VueScan? It has a Photoshop plug-in now.

For your Canon LiDE25... I have a Canon LiDE 20 and I use VueScan instead. Supported on OS X (Natively, the LiDE 20 is not supported by OS X), Windows (Never tried though) and Linux (Tried on Ubuntu 10.04, works fine). It supports an insane amount of scanners. My dads AGFA SnapScan 310 (SCSI) and his Minolta DImage (also SCSI) dia scanner work perfectly using it.

In all fairness, XSane worked fine with both the LiDE 20 and the SnapScan 310 (but not the Minolta Dimage), but the interface is... something to get used to.

It's also a good example how commercial software can work in the Linux world.

A question: how did you get TCP over USB to work on Linux? My mother in law has an all-in-one scanner. As a printer/scanner works fine directly connected to USB under Linux, but I have connected it to a print server so the other computers can also print. It uses JetDirect (port 9100) and works fine on all computers on the network. However, I never managed to get the scanning part to work. The print server supports USB-TCP, but I haven't found how to get it working under Ubuntu.

Tell me about it. and then they stop supporting your scanner for no reason at all!

Do yourself a favour. Uninstall the software and get a copy of Vuescan

I know I sound like a shill to others, but you know how much HP's Mac software sucks.

Just to add in a little anecdote of mine. I recently upgraded my brothers PC, in the sense that we replaced motherboard/CPU and RAM. The rest stayed the same. As he now has 16GB RAM, we decided to shell out for Win7 Pro 64-bit instead of reusing the OEM XP license (which would be borderline in legality).

Anyway, that machine has a Linksys WMP54G (version 1.0) wireless PCI card. Silly me, expected it to work by default in Windows as the card was a bit older and my experience from XP was that "if it existed prior to release, there is a driver". Well, no.... *sigh*

Linksys website, no avail. Tried their customer support which said "Not Supported". Call me old-fashioned, but a NIC should be one of the things that is least-"obsoleteable". Luckily, I found a forum post (look for the post by "skinnypirate") that this particular card uses a RALink Chip and you can use their drivers.

Now, I freely admit I didn't try Linux on this machine... (Gaming machine) Perhaps it wouldn't work either... Who knows...

As for Win7 obsoleted scanners... Before throwing them out, consider the following first: VueScan (Not affiliated, just a very happy customer). It's an amazing little piece of software that seems to operate pretty much any scanner you throw at it. My dad has a SCSI Dia/Negative-Scanner with advanced functions for rewinding film and stuff like that. On Linux, XSane doesn't even detect it... VueScan sees it and all functions can be used. Same for my wifes cheap Canon LiDE20. Not supported on Mac OS X 10.6.x at all... VueScan sees it and it works perfectly. Old SCSI AGFA SnapScan 310? No problem... (XSane does this one too though.)

I've never used in on Windows though... Only on Linux and Mac OS X. I have no reason to believe that the quality of the software is less on Windows. You may argue that the software is more expensive than a new cheap scanner. True, but once you have the software, you'll never use another one ever again.

They do? SCSI cards cost what now? 50$ Which is nothing compared what they used to cost. I've got a truckload of PCI SCSI cards out of dumpsters. SCSI is wonderfully versatile. Attach the disk, the scanner, the optical drive or the tape drive and chances it will just work. Your chances are better with Linux than with Windows these days, but often it's just complaining from Windows. We have a SCSI Dia Scanner device, which used to turn up with a yellow triangle in the device manager on XP. Worked fine with the enclosed software, though. With Linux it works, but not with XSane... I have VueScan license (actually two, I have one, my dad has one). Works perfectly fine. Good software also for those unsupported scanners: Canon LiDE 20. No support on Mac OS X, but with VueScan... No problem. I'm getting offtopic though.

My experience is that SCSI disks will do just fine attached to a modern SCSI card and I still have my Iomega Jaz 1GB which works just fine.

The two PCMCIA SCSI cards I have though don't work well: not at all under Windows IIRC, and very badly under Linux.

Anyway: best I probably can do for "esoteric" is some Computer Architecture Projects I did back at the Uni on OS/2 Warp. Made on some IBM Office software that came with it. Those files are stored on one of the Jaz disks (Yes, the disks are still functional, I tested them a few months ago for kick 'n giggles when I found them back). Getting them from there is not hard (It's FAT32 after all), but reading the files might turn out problematic.

Second "hardest" is probably Wordperfect 5.1 files from even longer ago. I still have some letters I wrote with my teenage romance. Ah, memories... Those simply stayed in an archive folder that moved with me from computer to computer. They're zipped and I expect OpenOffice to open them just fine (or at least "readable").

Can't compete with those on esoteric material with weird filesystems on audio tapes and the like. I'm too young for that, even though I'm 34.

$25 for a non-commercial version of an audio editor of all things? For one thing, a short sentence describing the "license" is not helpful at all. Can I sell my audio on a CD to people? What do you mean by "commercial product." I can't reasonably determine the legal difference between the $99 and $25 version one.

I just don't get it. It would seem to me that a lot of people that would be interested in the rather unique way your software does things would be quite skeptical of it in the beginning. Charging $25 and not allowing commercial redistribution of the end products is really just another way for you to get beta-testers that *pay you* for the privilege. If there is any company that could do this, it is probably Apple, and not even they do it too much.

That is the perception I have. If I have your demo, and want to use the software, why do I want to pay $25 for crippleware, that stuff is free.

Your second marketing error is probably that $99 is probably too much money. How did you land on this price point? If it had to do with your costs and what you thought was "fair", then it is most likely wrong. Your price can only be properly determined in terms of your market. The last program I remember purchasing for personal use was this one: http://www.hamrick.com/ I probably would have paid $20 more for it, but look at that website and the community that uses it and compare it to yours. Actually, now that I recall, I just purchased a large piano sample set for a few hundred, so I'm not one of these cheap punkass bitches that never spends money on software.

I buy good software, I do audio, your price is too damn high for what it is. Take that as constructive criticism.

Really, look at some other company's pricing plans. There is such as thing as tiered pricing done right. Having a "tier" where the product is essentially useless but costs more than a couple bucks is a joke.

If I pay $99 I do want some kind of support channel. You might be a really conscientious person, but your website does not instill confidence. Think about it. $99 is for a product. Anyone that told you a lump of code you run through a compiler is the *product* lied. The website, your support channel, they are all part of the product.

Minor nit: I would completely avoid telling people in your manual what they can do in "all legality." Have you consulted lawyers in all the jurisdictions you're distributing your product? Probably no one is going to get sued over that statement in your manual, but remember that when you tell people what they can do in "all legality" in a product's documentation, it can be interpreted as practicing law without a license, and it really is stupid to do anyways.

I used an XP x64 workstation at work for two years, as a developer workstation - worked great.

Same here. Using XP64 since it was available as a free download on MS. Stable as hell (and it should be, since it's based on the 2003 codebase but without the cruft).

The biggest hurdle has been specialty drivers. Nikon, for instance, refuses to offer 64-bit drivers for their professional scanners. The *only* option (besides reverting your OS) is to install a 3rd-party program (VueScan). So, a 3rd party software company can somehow figure out how to write 64-bit drivers for hardware that the manufacturer themselves can't write drivers for? Sure, Nikon.

SonicWall tried the same bullshit with their VPN client, at least until their business users cried bloody murder. Took them nearly 5 years to release a driver, and it's still a Beta!

Of course, Vista64 users are in the same boat, so I don't understand why people think XP64 is special in this regard.

But I digress...

See, when I work in film, I need to have a Mac around to handle the flatbed scanner. Because, unfortunately, Linux support for flatbed scanners really sucks rocks.

It's funny, I just posted something similar but not in those words. Actually, I used is as an example for commercial software on Linux. I have a SCSI Dia scanner and XSane wouldn't work with it. To XSanes defence: my old SCSI Flatbed scanner did work, though. VueScan was the solution for me. Perhaps that could be the solution for you too? (Just a happy customer... :-D)

What about Vuescan? ( http://www.hamrick.com/ )

Is it not as good as it says it is, or is your scanner not supported?

• "it's not a bug, it's a feature!"
• That problem? Yes, it is known... It will be fixed in the next version. Be prepared to pay!
• No, that file format is obsolete, you need to use the new one now. A business partner send you the new one and can't open it? How is that my problem?
• Just reboot it!
• ....
• Need I go on? If I really wanted to be flamebaitish, I'd say "Vista"... Oops, too late.

The article is wrong, and flamebait. All problems he argues about are by design and the correct decisions. That said, I'm not an "everything must be open source" fanatic, even though I think ultimately that would be best. Hey, I even bought a commercial application for Linux (because the free one really sucked with the hardware I had), namely: VueScan. As said, this was mainly because of specialized hardware which XSane didn't support.

See my earlier post about Vuescan http://www.hamrick.com/ - I really like it and it's stable, supports a lot of scanners and has great technical support. The support alone is worth the $40 I paid - especially since Nikon has orphaned their film scanners such as my 5000.

The easiest tool I found for the photos is Adobe Photoshop CS (a bit expensive, but worth every penny - you could download a trial version from Adobe.)

Checkout Vuescan http://www.hamrick.com/ - a very flexible tool for scanning; it supports Mac and Windows as well as wide range of scanners. Outstanding technical support as well.

I second the Nikon Scanner - I have a 5000 that I really like.

There are scanners which got feeder unit or there are some pro companies who can do such a thing with a price.

Software is important for such a project. For such a job, I recommend Hamrick's Vuescan, it has executables for Windows, OS X and Linux. Thing is, it will make things automatically.

http://hamrick.com/

As I am perfectly happy with my el-cheapo Canoscan Lide 25 (upgraded from Lide 20 which had some accident), I went to Canon USA site to recommend such a scanner but it seems they have some mad invention there which they really failed to advertise.

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=122&modelid=9888

It installs to a Canon printer (which looks cheap) like a inkjet ink and printer becomes auto feed scanner. As I assume you got a scanner already, that solution could be a better thing. I am not sure about the quality though. I also don't know if Hamrick Vuescan or even Sane would ever support such a thing too. It is really worth looking into, perhaps see some demo or review from a trustable source.

Other solution is Xerox or HP multiple document scanners (with feeder). I would go with Xerox, I keep reading about HP driver horror stories.

1. Use a CanoScan 9950f or Epson v750*
2. Get a registered copy of VueScan
3. Scan at your scanner's max physical resolution for 6x6, and 1/2 max for 4x5
4. Set white and blackpoints to 0.
5. Scan at 16 bit depth greyscale, 2 samples, no sharpening, no dust correction
6. Save as 16 bit Tiff
7. Load your images in Cinepaint or Photoshop CS or Elements 4 or later
8. Adjust the "Levels" to set your desired black and white points.
9. Save this to your archive as a 16 bit tiff.

1. Open the image in your editor
2. Resample down to the desired size (@300ppi for minilabs and many inkjets, 360ppi for Epson inkjets, ignore ppi and dpi for screen display)
3. Apply unsharp mask (you can sharpen a LOT on large B&W)
4. If you have a profile for your printer or lab, convert to that. If you're sending to a minilab you don't have a profile for or posting online, convert to sRGB.
5. If printing on your own printer, save this file as print-ready, 16 bit profiled tiff.
6. If you're sending to a minilab or posting online, convert to 8bit and save as JPEG (98% qual for minilabs, 75% ish for posting

I've been writing mainly Linux desktop how-to pieces for the last year. I run Fedora Core 2, shortly upgrading to 3.

I've found that while in general, adding a capability (e.g. multimedia) to a Linux box takes half an hour to an hour, finding out what to do most of the time takes from a full working day to several weeks worth of full working days.

I'm not talking complicated or obscure, I'm talking things like image and archival backups... I finally gave up on finding OpenSource apps that would do what I was looking for and figured out how to script dar and rsync. Getting multimedia working was a nightmare. It isn't supposed to be.

In my experience, getting the right answer back from the various Linux help forums in response to inquiries almost never works, if you can't find the answer via googling to somebody who ran into the same problem, the options are to invent a solution or give up.

Could Linux multimedia apps that have dependencies that can't be distributed with the distro announce what the problems are and let the user point and click her way to a downloadable solution? Yes, but they don't.

I don't recommend desktop Linux at this point to anyone but companies who can control what apps and peripherals are used and support everything in-house, or to end users who can get computer help in person from local Linux experts, whether out of friendship or for a high hourly consultant rate.

Peripheral drivers are a major issue, having the basic set of apps a desktop user needs (multimedia, backup, etc.) are the other.

Tried VueScan?

What are you smoking?

I have a LiDE 30 and it works very well in Linux, in some ways better than with TWAIN in Windows.

After trying to make it work with SANE, I gave up and started using the very nice vuescan, which works out-of-the-box

Crow T. Trollbot

Just remember: "TWAIN" not "WIA" not "All-in-one"

Why?

I just remember VueScan. It has cross platform compatibility and supports more scanners than you can shake a stick at. And the developer is accessible and updates often.

No connection other than a very satisfied customer. Dirt cheap for what it does.

I've found that VueScan (not Free software, but it does work under Linux and there is an edition that costs nothing) gives good results, and the multi-scan feature is especially good. However, there are two problems with using Linux downstream from that point. Firstly, the GIMP doesn't support colour depths greater than 8 bits, while my slide scanner produces 14 bits of colour depth (or 8 if you don't want 14). It's a shame to have to throw away those extra 18 bits of information per pixel.

Having said this, Photoshop Elements has the same limitation, though I'm sure that the premium Photoshop product does not. The Nikon scan tools don't. I use Photoshop Elements but not GIMP. The reaon why is a bit hard to pin down but it comes down to usability. The layering and selection tools in Photoshop Elements are more suited to doing photo manipulation than the ones in GIMP. Also, if you have a complex selection, Photoshop Elements is noticably more responsive on Windows than GIMP is on Linux on the same hardware. GIMP isn't actually sluggish, but PhotoSchop is more responsive and hence certainly easier to use.

I use Linux for exerything else (except a few bits at work) and I wish this wasn't true, but I find that Windows is indeed a better platform for photo work. That's ignoring the whole area of printing, too. Finding a printer that produces high-quality results which works under Linux is easy; finding one that the vendors still sell is much harder. I don't have a lot of time to devote to that search, so I haven't bought a printer yet.

In fact, I wish there were businesses that would sell "Lilnux compatible" hardware. I wouldn't look for support, and I'd pay a premium. I'd just like to be able to buy stuff from someone who can say "I got it to work with Linux".

Sure, glad you found it useful :) I have beautiful 13x19s (11x14 cropped) output from an Epson stylus Photo 1280, scanned from Velvia, Astia, and Kodak E100VS/SW/GX from the scanner into VueScan and then tweaked, profiles applied, and printed from PhotoShop 7 - it's a good workflow, I think you'll find the color to be excellent. Read Ed Hamrick's user guide at http://www.hamrick.com/files/vuestart.pdf, it will help get set up.

I've done a ton of color management under MacOS for a while now. Apple tends to lead/support some of the best color management technologies. Their "ColorSync" framework makes synchronizing color reproduction possible across multiple devices and applications.

But, considering the massive complexity in getting color right, I'd be somewhat afraid to make the process any more complicated than it already is. (by switching my color critical machines to Linux or Windows.)

I have to give a favorable mention to VueScan. It is a great piece of scanning software that supports a multitude of scanners and is available for linux. http://www.hamrick.com/vsm.html

You're in luck. A good tool for the job is out for linux. Check out VueScan for Linux at http://www.hamrick.com/. It's not free (like speech, or even like beer), but it will get the job done.

That said I hate to point it out, but the average pro photographer that doesn't want to spend lots of time tweaking each and everyone of thousands of photos is willing to part with $$$ to get the job done.

The result is that there seem to be 4 ways to tackle this problem.

1. $50-$300 Get good scanning software. VueScan is well regarded for automagic tuning of scans (as well as loads of scanner support), higher up market you get programs like SilverFast. Most hobbists and some pros use this stuff
2. $1000-$4000 various hardware dedicated to scanning transparencies on the desktop. There are a pretty decent crop of desktop drum scanners now... The pricier the better? Not really my field, but I'm guessing low-volume pros inhabit this range.
3. $1500-$4000 Most pros are probably switching to digital SLRs if they are high volume digital users.
4. $$$ professional out-sourcing of scanning to service bureaus. High-volume pros with exhibition quality work are still farming this work out. Of course they farm out alot of the grunt work related to handling their film...

Now realize that professionals make a living using these tools; some lenses run into the thousands of dollars each, so none of these options are really that expensive if it's going to grow your business..
-Sandro Fouche

Probably whatever Vuescan supports.

I included a link but may have forgot to close it - hoy can find VueScan here. They also have a trial version so you can see if it works with your scanner.

http://www.hamrick.com/ Ed Hamrick, Author of Vuescan, supports 100+ scanners/cams HIMSELF. I licensed Vuescan while having Canon's own scanning software. It was simply better.

http://www.lemkesoft.de/ Adrian Lemke, Author of Graphics Converter.

You meant single coders, those guys are single coding. I know more like 2-3 coder guys/gals , also use/buy their software.

What about RAR "labs"? We know its a single guy coding (Alexander Roshal) .

If people buy the stuff they use, there will be many more "lonely coder" guys.

Actually, there's a scanner program called Vuescan that will let you do something like this. It's not an open format, but the program will allow you to save the raw output from the scanner to a file and then manipulate it after the fact.

Hamrick Software ... Download VueScan 8.0.14 now, by clicking on: Mac OS X Windows Linux. ... It is available in English, German and Japanese. Purchasing VueScan. ...
www.hamrick.com

I too tried dcraw and among other things (file size?), I never really liked the white balance afterward.

Vuescan on the other hand, is very well built. It has a linux version and was made for film and flatbed scanners (some of which have little to no linux support otherwise), but it can also scan from CRW files (canon raws). It still has all the flexibility you get with film scanners when you scan from raws (gamma, white balance, etc), and it does ICC profiles, too. You can even calibrate using your IT8 target if you have one.

Sure it's not free, but I think they deserve $60-$80 for their work.

Granted my needs in this department run towards correcting the colors from my slide scanner, and I'm using them to compensate for the problems in the original color films (dye fading, crappy cheap and/or old film, variations between Ektachrome and Kodachrome, that sort of thing.) And, I'm using the ICC color profiles that came with Vuescan (the best scanning software I've used yet) and so they're corrected before I load them up in Paint Shop Pro. And as far as my digital camera goes, I set the color balance before shooting (taking a shot of a gray card is pretty damn simple these days) and the camera itself adjusts the colors quite adequately.

So, I'm not using color management from within the GIMP or Paint Shop Pro on the images taken directly from my digital camera, but you didn't ask that. You asked which home users need color management. My answer is anyone who cares about the images they produce, and that's not the exclusive domain of the professional photographers. The disks I'm producing are simply family photo albums on DVD for my wife's family, and will probably never be seen by more than fifty people. But they're the most important audience I can imagine, and I don't want to give them crappy images.

They've brought out that C-41 B&W film to try and get people to buy film, but I won't use it. It's the same price as color, and has the same orange tinting to the negatives as color film, an added pain when I'm scanning them in.

For those not familiar with it, the multiple exposure they talk about in the article has been long used in the darkroom and can be done easily with modern scanners with good software. It brings out extreme details in parts of images that are normally burnt out.

Take a single slide that you scan. With a program like VueScan, you can set the exposure of the scanner, so you can do a dark scan (thus exposing properly the light part of the image), a normal scan and a light scan (exposing the dark part of the image).

Import all 3 into a graphic program, superimpose them and cancel the parts that you don't like (which is the creative part and not as easy as it seems).

Note that you can also do that taking 3 pictures with various exposure with the camera on a tripod, and it's the way the Mars rover does it.

If you are unwilling to venture into the unknown, take a look at VueScan by Hamrick Software.

VueScan is a very impressive scanning application that runs on OSX/Lin/Win. It works with just about every scanner out there (including my POS Acer), and is very useful for managing scanning projects such as multiple photos etc... It's $60 shareware, but you get a lot of bang for your buck. It's easily one of the best OS X apps on the market.

If you are unwilling to venture into the unknown, take a look at VueScan by Hamrick Software.

VueScan is a very impressive scanning application that runs on OSX/Lin/Win. It works with just about every scanner out there (including my POS Acer), and is very useful for managing scanning projects such as multiple photos etc... It's $60 shareware, but you get a lot of bang for your buck. It's easily one of the best OS X apps on the market.