[ubuntu-studio-devel] Simple scan

[Len Ovens]

On Tue, 15 Oct 2013, David Henningsson wrote:

> On 10/14/2013 09:45 PM, Len Ovens wrote:
>> I am running 12.04.3 on the machine that has the scanner. Maybe newer
>> versions support colour.
>
> Next to the "Scan" button there is a drop-down menu. Select "text" for
> quick monochrome scan. Select "photo" for slower color scan.
>
> I just tried it on 12.04.3 - it works here. In color, definitely.
> Hardware is a HP PSC 1210, if that matters.

Ah! An unlabeled button that doesn't mention colour. Ya that works.

Ok, having figgured that out. Is there anyone who uses scanning for 
critical things where colour setup and other such things matter who can 
tell us which scanning application gives the best results? Or do people 
scan first and then use a second app to mess the colour around? Is there 
any control that sw can do to change how the image is scanned? Lamp 
intensity (which would change its colour too I would guess)? Anything 
else?

---------------------8<-----------------------

Some googling around later... I see instructions for scanning from gimp. 
They don't work. Read it again and I see I need XSane or xscanimage to 
make it work. I load XSane and yup I can scan an image directly into 
gimp... Cool. xscanimage shows up too, but I haven't tried to actually 
scan with it. It is included in the sane package, so probably the same 
backend. It seems there are gimp plugins that will import direct from 
cameras too.

Also found while googling... a mention of open office doing scanning, let 
me try libreoffice. Yes Draw, Write and Impress in libreoffice claim to 
import scans as well. (this machine doesn't have a scanner hooked up so I 
can't tell)

Anyway, It appears there is at least room to check this out. I would think 
being able to scan directly into gimp would be a desirable thing for the 
graphics and photo metas. xscanimage does not come with a *.desktop file 
and would not run that way if there is no scan device anyway so maybe that 
is just as well. It doesn't put up a GUI error dialog either, just puts 
the error to STDERR. That may make it look broken, better to use XSane if 
we want a menu entry.


--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net