I downloaded the FreeScanner pgm that someone suggested, but the instructions are in French. Is there a way to get the English version of the pgm?

I downloaded the FreeScanner program someone suggested, but the installation instructions are in French. Is there a way to get the English version?

New version with bugfixes released Download

your kidding, right?

UncleDoodie, what is the best Canon scanner under $100-$150?

While cross format conversion is very common, it is very important to note that once one converts from RAW, there is absolutely no way to restore important original photo data that was lost in the conversion. In fact, just as important original photo data is lost when converting away from RAW, even more data is lost when converting from PNG or BMP to any other format that can never be recovered.

Furthermore, when converting to lossy formats such as highly compressed GIF or JPG formats, not only is significant data permanently lost, but artifacts that reduce the overall value of the photo are introduced that can simply not be removed.

Despite what you may have been told, TIF is the best format for archiving documents and RAW is the very best photographic format.

TIF is the format prefered by the Smithsonian Institution for preserving digital copies of documents. At 16 bits, Tiff files are lossless. That means none of the original color, saturation or other data is lost. Tiff files can be compressed as much as any jpg without losing any photo data and without any loss of photo detail. There will also never be any introduction of moire or other artifacts, as there is with jog and even BMP and PNG.

RAW is the format prefered for perserving the most data about photographs as it is also lossless and preserves data that no other format even knows about such as white balance, color depth, etc. RAW format has 12 bits and has a color depth of 4096 intensities for each pixel. JPG at 8 bits has only 256 intensities for each pixel (and remember, due to the lossy nature of jpg, depending on how much compression is used, there are actually fewer (sometimes significantly fewer) unique pixels to begin with as compared with RAW or TIF).

If you lack the skill to know the difference, or you think that JPG is good enough for your photos, then saving as a JPG is certainly good enough for you.

The only disadvantage to RAW files is that they have to be converted to TIF or JPG to print them, unless you are particularly well off and can afford a printer that handles RAW format. The other main disadvantage with RAW format is that they take up alot of space. That means you can store fewer pics.

Other formats are OK for the snapshot/amateur crowd, but pros prefer RAW or TIFF.

That brings me to my analysis of the tif format as implements in Scanitto. While I have recommended TIF format, I am refering to 16 bit TIF. Scanitto only produces lossy 8 bit TIF files. Not archival. Purely amateur software for those too lazy to find the right drivers and software for thier scanners.

I was a photo editor for a .com and we used the scanner a lot, we had bot a Cannon and a HP and bot worked fine. As another said that the software that comes on the CD, which most of us never use, usually contains some pretty good software. I was impredded with a program that came with one of the copier/scanner purchases I made in the last 10 years. The program is ACDSee, I reccomend this to all who take images and want to compress them, text or photo. The superior part of this program is the dithering it does upon compression which can be set to a airbrushed look. Thanks GOTD for putting Star Burn up again, that program is nearly worth 4 stars! I haven't got a Blu-Ray yet, but the ability to create easily ISO images that mount as if they were a disk is great! Keep up the good work!

Maybe this will get my old scanner up and working again, as it was not compatible when MS upgraded their OS from 9x to XP. As far as formats, it really doesn't matter as image formats can be easily converted nowadays.

Post #2 is right, every scanner comes with its own software and if not, almost all photoshop programs can do this. can you please post something more usefull gotd

Antique software. Any $20 scanner comes with better software. Even old scanners have free software available from the manufacturer that does more than this, and better. If you have any MS Office Suite, there is a set of programs called Microsoft Office Document Imaging and Document Scanning that includes a very comprehensive scan and file system as well as OCR (Optical Character Recognition) that literally "reads" the scanned document and makes a .doc out of it.

If you have any decent graphics editor, it probably already has pic scanning built in.

As for this program, it does not play well with other scanner software. It even caused problems with both MS Office programs mentioned, and also caused problems with Corel programs with scanning capabilities.

After installing this Scanitto junk software every other program reported that the scanner was jammed (although it was not - removing this junk returned all functionality to the other programs).

Could not tell you if it is any good, I never got it to work in the first five minutes. And, it is clearly not worth investing any further time.


Some tips for scanning:

If you are going to send a document as a fax DOC, save as multipage tiff. TIF is best for any document as it contains the most information for document archive purposes. If you just want to knock something out, any format will do. However, for document archival purposes TIF is best.

If you have a high quality image, save it in the RAW format. That is one of the greatest problems with Scannito (after the apparent fact that it fights other software): it does not save in any RAW format, as does Canon and HP software.

RAW files are a little large, but you retain the ability to directly edit white balance, black balance and other important photographic data that gets lost in any other format (including PNG and BMP, but particularly GIF and JPG or any other compressed format). Many amateurs make the mistake of saving thier important pics in another format like PNG or BMP thinking that those formats save this important information, but RAW is the only format that saves all photo data and is always the best for photo editing.

Its name is Scanitto, soooooooo cute ^^. Ill dl just because of that

Forgoten to add some TIPS for all - cause even many professionals often make a lot of faults with this issue:

> TEXTS:
1. Save in b/w (smaller size, beeter sharpness...!!!)
2. and save ONLY as GIF (or eventually PNG) - NEVER as JPG (bigger and much worse quality!!!)

> IMAGES:
save as JPG, BUT IF YOU INTEND TO WORK LATER (again) on them - without any loss in qualtiy, choose PNG (compresses without loss of information); alternativly you might choose BMP and compress the images yourself with RAR, 7Z or ACE.

Greetings from
(german)werwölfchen

If you have an old scanner and run Windows 95 or 98 then this is a great gift. If not, stick with the program and drivers that came with the scanner. Canon makes the best scanners out there, hands down. I work in a scan unit for a big tech corp and have used them all- Canon wins hands down.

I didnt´t download and try out todays offer: Even the real great and free! IrfanView (I_View32.exe) can communicate with every TWAIN scanner... and do the scan/print/save jobs !!!

And ther you can choose to print, rotate, adjust colors/brightness/saturation/gamma...., resize and what else you might do to change/adjust; finally (or a instantly; - see I_views many startup and automation options) you can print the result or save it in dozen of different formats. The only missing feature is a real comfortable picture editing feature...
AND: I_view32.exe´s size ist only 400 KB!!! - It belongs to the very best of free software over all!

greetings
(german)werwölfchen

For the past few months I have been using the freeware scanner provided by Documalis, which has worked fine for my old Visioneer 7100 scanner
http://www.documalis.com/free/us_documalis_free_scanner.htm

Most things that I scan have to be retouched in Photoshop anyway. I can then save to the formats I need. Thanks anyway.

Works well for me. Downloaded, unpacked the zip file and ran the install after the activation. It is simple but not quick. Since I am not running dozens of scan this is a great program for casual use.

Apart from the fact that almost any imaging application will do much more than this, the Windows Scanner and Camera Wizard will do most of this (in XP, Start, All Programs, Accessories, Scanner and Camera Wizard). I'm sure it uses WIA over TWAIN, if it even supports it.

This is just an extremely limited utility with a poor user interface that finds TWAIN and WIA (Windows Image Acquisition) devices/drivers on your system and saves to a few image formats, with almost no options. As others have noted, it hangs if you hide the TWAIN user interface (although the result is saved). If you use the TWAIN user interface, it ignores Scanitto's settings (at least, mine does). I can't imagine anyone having a scanner which doesn't already have utilities which do a great deal more than this. This should be freeware, of which I'm sure there are many much better alternatives. If your scanner's software isn't far better than this, put your $20 toward a real scanner.

#5, Terry, driver bugs are a problem with every type of driver for every type of device. SANE is rarely used with Windows. The problem with many standardized interfaces, including WIA, is that they limit technological innovation. In the scanner world, TWAIN is the standard; high-end document scanners frequently use Pixel Translations' Image and Scanner Interface Specification (ISIS). As with any device, you should check your manufacturer's website for updated drivers. Most manufacturers quit updating drivers after a year or so, they're not making any money on hardware which was purchased in the past.

I tried the program with my only one HP Scanjet 2300c and it sees two scanners: HP Scanjet 2300c and WIA-HP Scanjet 2300c, but both of them seem to work. I choose the resolution, but very strange values can be chosen from that box (unspecific to scanning) or maybe it's just me. At first I let Hide native user interface unchecked and in the next mumbo jumbo my computer running Windows XP SP2 hanged. I tried again the software in this giveaway with that option checked and it worked just fine. After scanning, a thumbnail is shown, but while the cursor change to a hand when I am over it, nothing happens when I click it. I found out that there is a right-button menu to choose preview or printing, but I think that the preview should be available when I click on the image. Anyway my HP scanning software is somehow triggered by this application, but I hoped it isn't. Moreover the program lacks a lot of options available in the HP scanning software. There's no way I need this program then.

#8 - I also had a problem with an older scanner on XP. The info here solved my problem. Maybe it will be of help.

This work well for me. I have an old scanner that have problem with it´s own drivers. This program solve it and gives me more opportunities.
Thanks.

I appreciate such give aways.

However, this application does not work as it's advertised.

It asks to select a webcam, scanner and another scanner which is not connected to my rig.

I would not recommend this application and look for a freeware alternative.

It activates and installs fine I will add.

This could be really useful, since my scanner software interface is very basic (crap!). I have not seen any alternatives until now. This is just the kind of thing that makes GotD a valuable service!

But... having installed the software, it hangs after scanning a small portion of the image. Driver compatibility issues? Bug? If I select 'Hide native interface', the scan stops part way through and the application hangs. If I don't hide the native interface Scanitto works fine - but the native interface is crap!

So, 1 Star for this product. Great idea, buggy execution!

I would not recommend the use of TWAIN drivers with scanners, because they force you to use their driver-specific interface, better to use a SANE driver for your scanner, which gives you the ability to scan multiple images and network the scanner more easily. Also, TWAIN scanners (especially HP) are notorious for quitting after scanning a few pages, since the forced interface software typically has bugs and is never updated, overflowing after transferring minimal amounts of data.

#2: If you are using a HP scanner with its HP software, you'd love to have some alternative. I've never seen such a piece of #$!$!#@ before. I should try this, it sounds promising.

Too old fashioned to download.

Hardly of any use. Nearly every scanner gives such a software with its purchase. Many freeware image editing programmes also have this facility.

I wish I had had something like that when I scanned some pics and had to save them as TIFF. Which was useless to me. Thanks GOTD!