Having bought a new Canon scanner I am underwhelmed by the bundled
software.

Good points - put a single photo of any size in the scanner and push the
auto scan button and it quickly scans the picture and crops to the edges.

Bad points - despite the alleged high possible resolutions it doesn't seem
to offer more than 600 dpi via the configuration utility and I can't even
get it to auto scan at that resolution - obviously not understanding how
the (undocumented) features work.

So I am contemplating using other software. I thought it came with
Photoshop Elements but it turns out that was only the MK 1 version, not
the MK 2 that I have.

So - bundled software apparently not much good, so use something else.

TWAIN compliant scanner, so a lot of software packages can use it.
I have had acceptable results with Windows Paint - I can select the
resolution beyond 300/600 DPI but this scans to a buffer and needs
manually cropping and saving, so isn't good for bulk scanning loads of
photos.

Given the above, there seem to be two routes to go:

(1) Free or paid scanner software - I know about Vuescan because I helped
a friend get an old semi-professional SCSI scanner set up. Google doesn't
really turn up much else. The Standard Edition is $39.95 (about £27) but
doesn't support scanning of slides/negatives and the Pro Edition is $89.95
(about £61).

(2) Photo manipulation software such as Photoshop Elements 13 (about £65
from Amazon - 11 and 12 are about £10 more!). GIMP is free but previous
experience suggests that it is possibly too powerful and complex for this
simple application.

So, scanner users.

What software do you use to bulk scan prints?

I think the facilities I need are a one click operation to:

scan picture

crop automatically

generate file name

so the number of interactions is cut to a minimum.

It would be nice to load in several photos at once and have them
automatically recognised as multiple pictures and saved to different
files, but that would be icing on the cake.

Cheers

Dave R

--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

On Sunday, 15 March 2015 12:31:37 UTC, David wrote:
What software do you use to bulk scan prints?
I think the facilities I need are a one click operation to:
scan picture
crop automatically
generate file name
so the number of interactions is cut to a minimum.
It would be nice to load in several photos at once and have them
automatically recognised as multiple pictures and saved to different
files, but that would be icing on the cake.

I don't use it for scanning, but
http://www.irfanview.com/
has batch processing facilities and the faq says it supports batch scanning (even without an auto document feeder)

Owain

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 12:31:34 +0000, David wrote:

Having bought a new Canon scanner I am underwhelmed by the bundled
software.

Good points - put a single photo of any size in the scanner and push the
auto scan button and it quickly scans the picture and crops to the
edges.

Bad points - despite the alleged high possible resolutions it doesn't
seem to offer more than 600 dpi via the configuration utility and I
can't even get it to auto scan at that resolution - obviously not
understanding how the (undocumented) features work.

So I am contemplating using other software. I thought it came with
Photoshop Elements but it turns out that was only the MK 1 version, not
the MK 2 that I have.

So - bundled software apparently not much good, so use something else.

TWAIN compliant scanner, so a lot of software packages can use it.
I have had acceptable results with Windows Paint - I can select the
resolution beyond 300/600 DPI but this scans to a buffer and needs
manually cropping and saving, so isn't good for bulk scanning loads of
photos.

Given the above, there seem to be two routes to go:

(1) Free or paid scanner software - I know about Vuescan because I
helped a friend get an old semi-professional SCSI scanner set up. Google
doesn't really turn up much else. The Standard Edition is $39.95 (about
£27) but doesn't support scanning of slides/negatives and the Pro
Edition is $89.95 (about £61).

(2) Photo manipulation software such as Photoshop Elements 13 (about £65
from Amazon - 11 and 12 are about £10 more!). GIMP is free but previous
experience suggests that it is possibly too powerful and complex for
this simple application.

So, scanner users.

What software do you use to bulk scan prints?

I think the facilities I need are a one click operation to:

scan picture

crop automatically

generate file name

so the number of interactions is cut to a minimum.

It would be nice to load in several photos at once and have them
automatically recognised as multiple pictures and saved to different
files, but that would be icing on the cake.


Supplementary - the Windows software Paint and Windows Fax&Scan both
refuse to set a resolution above 600 DPI, saying that they are illegal
values.

So presumably the scanner (driver?) is reporting this in some way.

I have raised a query with Canon support but I have no idea how long this
will take to get a response.

Has anyone come across a similar problem with scanners?

Cheers

Dave R







--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

"David" wrote in message ...

Having bought a new Canon scanner I am underwhelmed by the bundled
software.

Good points - put a single photo of any size in the scanner and push the
auto scan button and it quickly scans the picture and crops to the edges.

Bad points - despite the alleged high possible resolutions it doesn't seem
to offer more than 600 dpi via the configuration utility and I can't even
get it to auto scan at that resolution - obviously not understanding how
the (undocumented) features work.

So I am contemplating using other software. I thought it came with
Photoshop Elements but it turns out that was only the MK 1 version, not
the MK 2 that I have.

So - bundled software apparently not much good, so use something else.

TWAIN compliant scanner, so a lot of software packages can use it.
I have had acceptable results with Windows Paint - I can select the
resolution beyond 300/600 DPI but this scans to a buffer and needs
manually cropping and saving, so isn't good for bulk scanning loads of
photos.

Given the above, there seem to be two routes to go:

(1) Free or paid scanner software - I know about Vuescan because I helped
a friend get an old semi-professional SCSI scanner set up. Google doesn't
really turn up much else. The Standard Edition is $39.95 (about £27) but
doesn't support scanning of slides/negatives and the Pro Edition is $89.95
(about £61).

(2) Photo manipulation software such as Photoshop Elements 13 (about £65
from Amazon - 11 and 12 are about £10 more!). GIMP is free but previous
experience suggests that it is possibly too powerful and complex for this
simple application.

So, scanner users.

What software do you use to bulk scan prints?

I think the facilities I need are a one click operation to:

scan picture

crop automatically

generate file name

so the number of interactions is cut to a minimum.

It would be nice to load in several photos at once and have them
automatically recognised as multiple pictures and saved to different
files, but that would be icing on the cake.

Cheers

Dave R

Which scanner is it?

In article ,
writes
On Sunday, 15 March 2015 12:31:37 UTC, David wrote:
What software do you use to bulk scan prints?
I think the facilities I need are a one click operation to:
scan picture
crop automatically
generate file name
so the number of interactions is cut to a minimum.
It would be nice to load in several photos at once and have them
automatically recognised as multiple pictures and saved to different
files, but that would be icing on the cake.

I don't use it for scanning, but
http://www.irfanview.com/
has batch processing facilities and the faq says it supports batch scanning (even
without an auto document feeder)

Yes, you select 'single image' or multiple images' from the scanning
dialogue and can select options for the base title eg. IMG, Scan or
Holidays and then choose an auto incrementing number for the suffix with
optional padding. Scans are saved automatically to a chosen folder.

Thereafter you just keep hitting the scan button or preview and then
scan and the scanning dialogue remains open ready for the next scan.

The selectable resolutions will depend on the twain driver provided with
scanner but I'd question the wisdom of scanning above 600dpi for prints,
it will take ages, generate huge files and I doubt the extra resolution
will recover much more detail.

Similarly, I think the recognition of individual images within the
scanning field will also be a function of the driver.

You (o/p) will still be stuck with making fine rotations to square up
the images and Irfanfiew is a little clunky in that respect. Photoshop
is better and there are 'free' editions of CS2 available which have
quite a nice fine rotation mechanism. Gimp (free) may have something
similar.

--
fred
it's a ba-na-na . . . .

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 13:45:09 +0000, Richard wrote:

"David" wrote in message ...

Having bought a new Canon scanner I am underwhelmed by the bundled
software.

Good points - put a single photo of any size in the scanner and push the
auto scan button and it quickly scans the picture and crops to the
edges.

Bad points - despite the alleged high possible resolutions it doesn't
seem to offer more than 600 dpi via the configuration utility and I
can't even get it to auto scan at that resolution - obviously not
understanding how the (undocumented) features work.

So I am contemplating using other software. I thought it came with
Photoshop Elements but it turns out that was only the MK 1 version, not
the MK 2 that I have.

So - bundled software apparently not much good, so use something else.

TWAIN compliant scanner, so a lot of software packages can use it.
I have had acceptable results with Windows Paint - I can select the
resolution beyond 300/600 DPI but this scans to a buffer and needs
manually cropping and saving, so isn't good for bulk scanning loads of
photos.

Given the above, there seem to be two routes to go:

(1) Free or paid scanner software - I know about Vuescan because I
helped a friend get an old semi-professional SCSI scanner set up. Google
doesn't really turn up much else. The Standard Edition is $39.95 (about
£27) but doesn't support scanning of slides/negatives and the Pro
Edition is $89.95 (about £61).

(2) Photo manipulation software such as Photoshop Elements 13 (about £65
from Amazon - 11 and 12 are about £10 more!). GIMP is free but previous
experience suggests that it is possibly too powerful and complex for
this simple application.

So, scanner users.

What software do you use to bulk scan prints?

I think the facilities I need are a one click operation to:

scan picture

crop automatically

generate file name

so the number of interactions is cut to a minimum.

It would be nice to load in several photos at once and have them
automatically recognised as multiple pictures and saved to different
files, but that would be icing on the cake.

Cheers

Dave R

Which scanner is it?


Canon CanoScan 9000F Mark II


--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 13:16:59 +0000, David wrote:

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 12:31:34 +0000, David wrote:

Having bought a new Canon scanner I am underwhelmed by the bundled
software.

Good points - put a single photo of any size in the scanner and push
the auto scan button and it quickly scans the picture and crops to the
edges.

Bad points - despite the alleged high possible resolutions it doesn't
seem to offer more than 600 dpi via the configuration utility and I
can't even get it to auto scan at that resolution - obviously not
understanding how the (undocumented) features work.

So I am contemplating using other software. I thought it came with
Photoshop Elements but it turns out that was only the MK 1 version, not
the MK 2 that I have.

So - bundled software apparently not much good, so use something else.

TWAIN compliant scanner, so a lot of software packages can use it.
I have had acceptable results with Windows Paint - I can select the
resolution beyond 300/600 DPI but this scans to a buffer and needs
manually cropping and saving, so isn't good for bulk scanning loads of
photos.

Given the above, there seem to be two routes to go:

(1) Free or paid scanner software - I know about Vuescan because I
helped a friend get an old semi-professional SCSI scanner set up.
Google doesn't really turn up much else. The Standard Edition is $39.95
(about £27) but doesn't support scanning of slides/negatives and the
Pro Edition is $89.95 (about £61).

(2) Photo manipulation software such as Photoshop Elements 13 (about
£65 from Amazon - 11 and 12 are about £10 more!). GIMP is free but
previous experience suggests that it is possibly too powerful and
complex for this simple application.

So, scanner users.

What software do you use to bulk scan prints?

I think the facilities I need are a one click operation to:

scan picture

crop automatically

generate file name

so the number of interactions is cut to a minimum.

It would be nice to load in several photos at once and have them
automatically recognised as multiple pictures and saved to different
files, but that would be icing on the cake.


Supplementary - the Windows software Paint and Windows Fax&Scan both
refuse to set a resolution above 600 DPI, saying that they are illegal
values.

So presumably the scanner (driver?) is reporting this in some way.

I have raised a query with Canon support but I have no idea how long
this will take to get a response.

Has anyone come across a similar problem with scanners?


Still adding to the original post.

Canon CanoScan 9000F Mark II

I have now downloaded and installed GIMP and when I use it to scan it
first asks which driver to use (I see two different Canon ones) and which
ever driver I select it offers a maximum resolution of 600 DPI.

I have downloaded and installed VueScan and I am running that as a trial
version.
VueScan provides its own driver (which is the main purpose of the
software) and offers the expected resolutions for the scanner.
It also scans at these resolutions.
So the problem seems to lie with the supplied Canon driver.

I've just updated all the drivers and software to the latest version
(thought I was on the latest, but perhaps not)

One driver package now seems to support 1200 DPI for use with other
software but the My Image Garden software still only seems to configure up
to 600 DPI.

Subject to more information from Canon, the only route for higher
definition scans seems to be via VueScan.

Not impressed if I have to cough more money just to unlock the basic
features of the scanner.

They may be concerned about naive users scanning in A4 colour prints at
4800 DPI and consuming vast amounts of memory and disc space, but the full
features (as advertised on their web page) should be available as at least
advanced features in the standard software.

Cheers

Dave R

--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 13:54:28 +0000, fred wrote:

In article ,
writes
On Sunday, 15 March 2015 12:31:37 UTC, David wrote:
What software do you use to bulk scan prints?
I think the facilities I need are a one click operation to:
scan picture crop automatically generate file name so the number of
interactions is cut to a minimum.
It would be nice to load in several photos at once and have them
automatically recognised as multiple pictures and saved to different
files, but that would be icing on the cake.

I don't use it for scanning, but http://www.irfanview.com/
has batch processing facilities and the faq says it supports batch
scanning (even without an auto document feeder)

Yes, you select 'single image' or multiple images' from the scanning
dialogue and can select options for the base title eg. IMG, Scan or
Holidays and then choose an auto incrementing number for the suffix with
optional padding. Scans are saved automatically to a chosen folder.

Thereafter you just keep hitting the scan button or preview and then
scan and the scanning dialogue remains open ready for the next scan.

The selectable resolutions will depend on the twain driver provided with
scanner but I'd question the wisdom of scanning above 600dpi for prints,
it will take ages, generate huge files and I doubt the extra resolution
will recover much more detail.

Similarly, I think the recognition of individual images within the
scanning field will also be a function of the driver.

You (o/p) will still be stuck with making fine rotations to square up
the images and Irfanfiew is a little clunky in that respect. Photoshop
is better and there are 'free' editions of CS2 available which have
quite a nice fine rotation mechanism. Gimp (free) may have something
similar.

Thanks to you both - will give it a go.
I have downloaded it.

What is CS2, please?

Cheers

Dave R



--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

On Sunday, 15 March 2015 15:07:20 UTC, David wrote:
What is CS2, please?

May 2005 version of Adobe Photoshop

Owain

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 13:54:28 +0000
fred wrote:

You (o/p) will still be stuck with making fine rotations to square up
the images and Irfanfiew is a little clunky in that respect.
Photoshop is better and there are 'free' editions of CS2 available
which have quite a nice fine rotation mechanism. Gimp (free) may have
something similar.

The GIMP does indeed have a facility for gentle or coarse rotation of
the image, Shift-R. Rotate with arrow keys, increment a counter, or
enter a number, then activate it.
--
Davey.

In article , David
writes
On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 13:54:28 +0000, fred wrote:

You (o/p) will still be stuck with making fine rotations to square up
the images and Irfanfiew is a little clunky in that respect. Photoshop
is better and there are 'free' editions of CS2 available which have
quite a nice fine rotation mechanism. Gimp (free) may have something
similar.

Thanks to you both - will give it a go.
I have downloaded it.

What is CS2, please?

Photoshop CS2 with CS2 indicating their version number. Current version
is CS5.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoshop

Adobe abandoned their licensing server support for CS2 a couple of years
ago and so offered it for download with an open key to users no longer
able to authenticate their purchase via a license server.

D/l he

http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/..._EOL/PHSP/PhSp
_CS2_English.exe

or http://tinyurl.com/cq4jlhw

Key:

1045-1412-5685-1654-6343-1431

Another has confirmed that GIMP has a useful fine rotation feature so
you might want to try that.

Oh, wait a minute, latest version of Irfanview has rotate to line, you
draw a line on the image that over an edge/line that you want to be
vertical or horizontal, confirm the action and the image is rotated
accordingly. This means that you could do it all in Irfanview, first
batch capture a whole bundle then walk through them, correcting for
rotation. Actually better I think than the old Photoshop method IMV as
you can zoom in before drawing your snap-to line. Certainly worth a
play.

--
fred
it's a ba-na-na . . . .

In article , David
writes

Not impressed if I have to cough more money just to unlock the basic
features of the scanner.

They may be concerned about naive users scanning in A4 colour prints at
4800 DPI and consuming vast amounts of memory and disc space, but the full
features (as advertised on their web page) should be available as at least
advanced features in the standard software.

I see it has an autoscan button which may be the quickest way to get raw
scans in.

On a previous canon I have used, the scan button (on the machine)
triggers an application and you can set parameters for the scan within
the application settings for the button on the PC. The defaults I recall
were always set pretty conservatively but were editable.

If no joy then try contacting canon support about how to scan to full
res. As it claims 4,800 optical for print scanning then I would expect
them to be able to help.

--
fred
it's a ba-na-na . . . .

On 15/03/2015 12:31, David wrote:
Having bought a new Canon scanner I am underwhelmed by the bundled
software.


Have you actually *read* the documentation which came with the scanner -
including the 334 page on-screen manual (which can be found at
content.etilize.com/User-Manual/1024506887.pdf)?

The scanner comes with MP Navigator Ex for people who want just to be
able to "point and shoot" without getting their hands dirty. But it also
comes with ScanGear which enables you to control the scanner at driver
level. That has several modes - including advanced. I'd be very
surprised if that doesn't do everything you want to do.
--
Cheers,
Roger
____________
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 13:54:28 +0000, fred wrote:

In article ,
writes
On Sunday, 15 March 2015 12:31:37 UTC, David wrote:
What software do you use to bulk scan prints?
I think the facilities I need are a one click operation to:
scan picture crop automatically generate file name so the number of
interactions is cut to a minimum.
It would be nice to load in several photos at once and have them
automatically recognised as multiple pictures and saved to different
files, but that would be icing on the cake.

I don't use it for scanning, but http://www.irfanview.com/
has batch processing facilities and the faq says it supports batch
scanning (even without an auto document feeder)

Yes, you select 'single image' or multiple images' from the scanning
dialogue and can select options for the base title eg. IMG, Scan or
Holidays and then choose an auto incrementing number for the suffix with
optional padding. Scans are saved automatically to a chosen folder.

Thereafter you just keep hitting the scan button or preview and then
scan and the scanning dialogue remains open ready for the next scan.

The selectable resolutions will depend on the twain driver provided with
scanner but I'd question the wisdom of scanning above 600dpi for prints,
it will take ages, generate huge files and I doubt the extra resolution
will recover much more detail.

Similarly, I think the recognition of individual images within the
scanning field will also be a function of the driver.

You (o/p) will still be stuck with making fine rotations to square up
the images and Irfanfiew is a little clunky in that respect. Photoshop
is better and there are 'free' editions of CS2 available which have
quite a nice fine rotation mechanism. Gimp (free) may have something
similar.

Well, thanks again.

I now have Infraview running in batch scanning mode and I have managed to
get the latest Canon driver/utility which will configure up to 1200 DPI,
although the Canon supplied photo utility will still only go up to 600 DPI.

The photos at 1200 DPI are looking O.K. and a single photo is coming in at
under 2 Mb which isn't going to eat up disc space.

The interesting bit (possibly) is that it doesn't do one full scan then
split the pictures afterwards in software.
It splits the pictures up in preview, then does multiple scans, one per
picture.
Presumably this allows it to do in flight fixing (if required) for each
picture individually but it does make for slower scanning.

Anyway, now dashing through the photo albums a lot faster than my old
scanner.

I can now decide on VueScan at my leisure.
I am still seriously tempted, and this would also allow me to couple up my
ancient scanner without needing to keep an XP virtual machine (due to lack
of compatible TWAIN drivers for recent versions of Windows).

I may not need the Pro version as Gimp can drive the photo negative
scanner bit, but again that needs testing for sanity with the settings.

Not the sophisticated experience you would expect for a scanner costing
over £150.

Cheers

Dave R

--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 16:16:06 +0000, fred wrote:

In article , David
writes
On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 13:54:28 +0000, fred wrote:

You (o/p) will still be stuck with making fine rotations to square up
the images and Irfanfiew is a little clunky in that respect. Photoshop
is better and there are 'free' editions of CS2 available which have
quite a nice fine rotation mechanism. Gimp (free) may have something
similar.

Thanks to you both - will give it a go.
I have downloaded it.

What is CS2, please?

Photoshop CS2 with CS2 indicating their version number. Current version
is CS5.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoshop

Adobe abandoned their licensing server support for CS2 a couple of years
ago and so offered it for download with an open key to users no longer
able to authenticate their purchase via a license server.

D/l he

http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/..._EOL/PHSP/PhSp
_CS2_English.exe

or http://tinyurl.com/cq4jlhw

Key:

1045-1412-5685-1654-6343-1431

Another has confirmed that GIMP has a useful fine rotation feature so
you might want to try that.

Oh, wait a minute, latest version of Irfanview has rotate to line, you
draw a line on the image that over an edge/line that you want to be
vertical or horizontal, confirm the action and the image is rotated
accordingly. This means that you could do it all in Irfanview, first
batch capture a whole bundle then walk through them, correcting for
rotation. Actually better I think than the old Photoshop method IMV as
you can zoom in before drawing your snap-to line. Certainly worth a
play.

Happily if you align the pictures to the edge of the bed then they come
out aligned.

So far, so good!



--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 16:26:54 +0000, fred wrote:

In article , David
writes

Not impressed if I have to cough more money just to unlock the basic
features of the scanner.

They may be concerned about naive users scanning in A4 colour prints at
4800 DPI and consuming vast amounts of memory and disc space, but the
full features (as advertised on their web page) should be available as
at least advanced features in the standard software.

I see it has an autoscan button which may be the quickest way to get raw
scans in.

On a previous canon I have used, the scan button (on the machine)
triggers an application and you can set parameters for the scan within
the application settings for the button on the PC. The defaults I recall
were always set pretty conservatively but were editable.

If no joy then try contacting canon support about how to scan to full
res. As it claims 4,800 optical for print scanning then I would expect
them to be able to help.

The buttons are udderish on bullish.
The autoscan doesn't seem (so far) to have the flexibility to fire up the
applications I am using in the way I am using them.

It would be nice to have a "Scan Print" button instead of AutoScan (which
has a will of its own) and a row of PDF related buttons.
[To be fair, this is just echoing the Which? review which also found the
buttons mainly useless.]

As I posted somewhere I have already griped to Canon support but I don't
hold out much hope.

I can get full resolution with VueScan, of course.

Cheers

Dave R

--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 16:31:09 +0000, Roger Mills wrote:

On 15/03/2015 12:31, David wrote:
Having bought a new Canon scanner I am underwhelmed by the bundled
software.


Have you actually *read* the documentation which came with the scanner -
including the 334 page on-screen manual (which can be found at
content.etilize.com/User-Manual/1024506887.pdf)?

The scanner comes with MP Navigator Ex for people who want just to be
able to "point and shoot" without getting their hands dirty. But it also
comes with ScanGear which enables you to control the scanner at driver
level. That has several modes - including advanced. I'd be very
surprised if that doesn't do everything you want to do.

Consider yourself very surprised?

Also, it doesn't come with MP Navigator EX.

The manual seems to refer to the MK 1 version (which I don't have) which
came with a much more comprehensive software bundle.

No manual of apparent comparable size is listed on the Canon support pages.

Most of the pages in the one I have cover trouble shooting.

So yes, I have actually read the documentation.

Have you?

--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

"David" wrote in message ...

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 13:16:59 +0000, David wrote:

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 12:31:34 +0000, David wrote:

Having bought a new Canon scanner I am underwhelmed by the bundled
software.

Good points - put a single photo of any size in the scanner and push
the auto scan button and it quickly scans the picture and crops to the
edges.

Bad points - despite the alleged high possible resolutions it doesn't
seem to offer more than 600 dpi via the configuration utility and I
can't even get it to auto scan at that resolution - obviously not
understanding how the (undocumented) features work.

So I am contemplating using other software. I thought it came with
Photoshop Elements but it turns out that was only the MK 1 version, not
the MK 2 that I have.

So - bundled software apparently not much good, so use something else.

TWAIN compliant scanner, so a lot of software packages can use it.
I have had acceptable results with Windows Paint - I can select the
resolution beyond 300/600 DPI but this scans to a buffer and needs
manually cropping and saving, so isn't good for bulk scanning loads of
photos.

Given the above, there seem to be two routes to go:

(1) Free or paid scanner software - I know about Vuescan because I
helped a friend get an old semi-professional SCSI scanner set up.
Google doesn't really turn up much else. The Standard Edition is $39.95
(about £27) but doesn't support scanning of slides/negatives and the
Pro Edition is $89.95 (about £61).

(2) Photo manipulation software such as Photoshop Elements 13 (about
£65 from Amazon - 11 and 12 are about £10 more!). GIMP is free but
previous experience suggests that it is possibly too powerful and
complex for this simple application.

So, scanner users.

What software do you use to bulk scan prints?

I think the facilities I need are a one click operation to:

scan picture

crop automatically

generate file name

so the number of interactions is cut to a minimum.

It would be nice to load in several photos at once and have them
automatically recognised as multiple pictures and saved to different
files, but that would be icing on the cake.


Supplementary - the Windows software Paint and Windows Fax&Scan both
refuse to set a resolution above 600 DPI, saying that they are illegal
values.

So presumably the scanner (driver?) is reporting this in some way.

I have raised a query with Canon support but I have no idea how long
this will take to get a response.

Has anyone come across a similar problem with scanners?


Still adding to the original post.

Canon CanoScan 9000F Mark II

I have now downloaded and installed GIMP and when I use it to scan it
first asks which driver to use (I see two different Canon ones) and which
ever driver I select it offers a maximum resolution of 600 DPI.

I have downloaded and installed VueScan and I am running that as a trial
version.
VueScan provides its own driver (which is the main purpose of the
software) and offers the expected resolutions for the scanner.
It also scans at these resolutions.
So the problem seems to lie with the supplied Canon driver.

I've just updated all the drivers and software to the latest version
(thought I was on the latest, but perhaps not)

One driver package now seems to support 1200 DPI for use with other
software but the My Image Garden software still only seems to configure up
to 600 DPI.

Subject to more information from Canon, the only route for higher
definition scans seems to be via VueScan.

Not impressed if I have to cough more money just to unlock the basic
features of the scanner.

They may be concerned about naive users scanning in A4 colour prints at
4800 DPI and consuming vast amounts of memory and disc space, but the full
features (as advertised on their web page) should be available as at least
advanced features in the standard software.

Cheers

Dave R

Dave,
You can download the latest manual from:
http://www.canon.co.uk/support/consu...?type=download
http://preview.tinyurl.com/luth6fx

Perhaps there is something here to help:
http://www.filmscanner.info/en/Canon...000FMark2.html

A quote from the
q
Sadly, we experienced differences in certain situations, depending on our
choice of program to open ScanGear with (My Image Garden vs. IJ Scan
Utility). We noticed this when we made an effort to test-scan with high
resolution: ScanGear refused to fine-scan a 35mm transparency at the chosen
resolution of 9600 ppi, asking to either reduce the scan area, or the output
size, or the resolution. We felt a bit cheated he If the device packaging
states 9600 ppi, the scan software should be able to deal with the
resulting - large amounts of data.
Canon CanoScan 9000F Mark II
We found an answer to this problem in the online manual. The menu item large
format scans has to be acitvated in the settings of ScanGear. At this point,
it's crucial that the ScanGear-setting are opened from the tool IJ Scan
Utility and not through the software My Image Garden - the settings of the
latter do not offer the aforementioned option. Hence, large material cannot
be digitized via My Image Garden but only via IJ Scan Utility, using the
QuickMenu.
We would have saved ourselves lots of time, had we known beforehand that
large format scans are made possible only with this particular, hidden
setup. The error message does not make this evident. Furthermore, one would
scarcely assume different preferences to pertain to the same scanner driver
depending on which program it is accessed by. Herein lies a lack of
consistency regarding the programs, even if in the field, the digitalization
of material at resolutions as high as 9600 ppi will probably be a rare case
with with the CanoScan 9000F Mark II.
/q

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 17:13:51 +0000, Richard wrote:

"David" wrote in message ...

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 13:16:59 +0000, David wrote:

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 12:31:34 +0000, David wrote:

Having bought a new Canon scanner I am underwhelmed by the bundled
software.

Good points - put a single photo of any size in the scanner and push
the auto scan button and it quickly scans the picture and crops to
the edges.

Bad points - despite the alleged high possible resolutions it doesn't
seem to offer more than 600 dpi via the configuration utility and I
can't even get it to auto scan at that resolution - obviously not
understanding how the (undocumented) features work.

So I am contemplating using other software. I thought it came with
Photoshop Elements but it turns out that was only the MK 1 version,
not the MK 2 that I have.

So - bundled software apparently not much good, so use something
else.

TWAIN compliant scanner, so a lot of software packages can use it.
I have had acceptable results with Windows Paint - I can select the
resolution beyond 300/600 DPI but this scans to a buffer and needs
manually cropping and saving, so isn't good for bulk scanning loads
of photos.

Given the above, there seem to be two routes to go:

(1) Free or paid scanner software - I know about Vuescan because I
helped a friend get an old semi-professional SCSI scanner set up.
Google doesn't really turn up much else. The Standard Edition is
$39.95 (about £27) but doesn't support scanning of slides/negatives
and the Pro Edition is $89.95 (about £61).

(2) Photo manipulation software such as Photoshop Elements 13 (about
£65 from Amazon - 11 and 12 are about £10 more!). GIMP is free but
previous experience suggests that it is possibly too powerful and
complex for this simple application.

So, scanner users.

What software do you use to bulk scan prints?

I think the facilities I need are a one click operation to:

scan picture

crop automatically

generate file name

so the number of interactions is cut to a minimum.

It would be nice to load in several photos at once and have them
automatically recognised as multiple pictures and saved to different
files, but that would be icing on the cake.


Supplementary - the Windows software Paint and Windows Fax&Scan both
refuse to set a resolution above 600 DPI, saying that they are illegal
values.

So presumably the scanner (driver?) is reporting this in some way.

I have raised a query with Canon support but I have no idea how long
this will take to get a response.

Has anyone come across a similar problem with scanners?


Still adding to the original post.

Canon CanoScan 9000F Mark II

I have now downloaded and installed GIMP and when I use it to scan it
first asks which driver to use (I see two different Canon ones) and
which ever driver I select it offers a maximum resolution of 600 DPI.

I have downloaded and installed VueScan and I am running that as a trial
version.
VueScan provides its own driver (which is the main purpose of the
software) and offers the expected resolutions for the scanner.
It also scans at these resolutions.
So the problem seems to lie with the supplied Canon driver.

I've just updated all the drivers and software to the latest version
(thought I was on the latest, but perhaps not)

One driver package now seems to support 1200 DPI for use with other
software but the My Image Garden software still only seems to configure
up to 600 DPI.

Subject to more information from Canon, the only route for higher
definition scans seems to be via VueScan.

Not impressed if I have to cough more money just to unlock the basic
features of the scanner.

They may be concerned about naive users scanning in A4 colour prints at
4800 DPI and consuming vast amounts of memory and disc space, but the
full features (as advertised on their web page) should be available as
at least advanced features in the standard software.

Cheers

Dave R

Dave,
You can download the latest manual from:
http://www.canon.co.uk/support/consu...ucts/scanners/
canoscan_series/canoscan_9000f_markii.aspx?type=download
http://preview.tinyurl.com/luth6fx

Perhaps there is something here to help:
http://www.filmscanner.info/en/Canon...000FMark2.html

A quote from the
q
Sadly, we experienced differences in certain situations, depending on
our choice of program to open ScanGear with (My Image Garden vs. IJ Scan
Utility). We noticed this when we made an effort to test-scan with high
resolution: ScanGear refused to fine-scan a 35mm transparency at the
chosen resolution of 9600 ppi, asking to either reduce the scan area, or
the output size, or the resolution. We felt a bit cheated he If the
device packaging states 9600 ppi, the scan software should be able to
deal with the resulting - large amounts of data.
Canon CanoScan 9000F Mark II We found an answer to this problem in the
online manual. The menu item large format scans has to be acitvated in
the settings of ScanGear. At this point,
it's crucial that the ScanGear-setting are opened from the tool IJ Scan
Utility and not through the software My Image Garden - the settings of
the latter do not offer the aforementioned option. Hence, large material
cannot be digitized via My Image Garden but only via IJ Scan Utility,
using the QuickMenu.
We would have saved ourselves lots of time, had we known beforehand that
large format scans are made possible only with this particular, hidden
setup. The error message does not make this evident. Furthermore, one
would scarcely assume different preferences to pertain to the same
scanner driver depending on which program it is accessed by. Herein lies
a lack of consistency regarding the programs, even if in the field, the
digitalization of material at resolutions as high as 9600 ppi will
probably be a rare case with with the CanoScan 9000F Mark II.
/q

Thanks.

Interesting reading.

I have the manual but it is remarkably reticent about the constraints on
the DPI settings - just shows you where the dialogue box is and tells you
to use it.

The review you quote also seems somewhat underwhelmed by the usability of
the software!

My Image Garden seems to be very ...err.. Digital as currently promoted by
the government and discussed at length in The Register. e.g.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02...tory_of_govuk/

I will mention VueScan again, which bypasses all this Canon driver dross.

Anyway, old picture album scanning rolling along boringly so the next
challenge is to scan some film at a decent resolution.

I wonder how average punters feel when they lash out for a high res
scanner which refused point blank to go above 600 DPI using the supplied
My Image Garden software?

Cheers

Dave R


--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

In article , David
writes

I now have Infraview running in batch scanning mode and I have managed to
get the latest Canon driver/utility which will configure up to 1200 DPI,
although the Canon supplied photo utility will still only go up to 600 DPI.

The photos at 1200 DPI are looking O.K. and a single photo is coming in at
under 2 Mb which isn't going to eat up disc space.

Anyway, now dashing through the photo albums a lot faster than my old
scanner.

Glad you're sorted and thanks for feeding back with your results.

One thing that does sound a little odd is your small file sizes, for
1200dpi they do seem awfully small for anything but the smallest prints
or saving with heavy image compression. If you're saving as jpg then it
would be a shame to be working at that level of detail and not saving at
a quality level of at least 95 percent on quality, at certainly at the
processing stage. Quality settings for batch are on the first Irfanview
scanning dialogue where you choose between single and multiple scans,
under Options, bottom right.

--
fred
it's a ba-na-na . . . .

On 15/03/2015 17:05, David wrote:
On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 16:31:09 +0000, Roger Mills wrote:

On 15/03/2015 12:31, David wrote:
Having bought a new Canon scanner I am underwhelmed by the bundled
software.


Have you actually *read* the documentation which came with the scanner -
including the 334 page on-screen manual (which can be found at
content.etilize.com/User-Manual/1024506887.pdf)?

The scanner comes with MP Navigator Ex for people who want just to be
able to "point and shoot" without getting their hands dirty. But it also
comes with ScanGear which enables you to control the scanner at driver
level. That has several modes - including advanced. I'd be very
surprised if that doesn't do everything you want to do.

Consider yourself very surprised?

Also, it doesn't come with MP Navigator EX.

The manual seems to refer to the MK 1 version (which I don't have) which
came with a much more comprehensive software bundle.

No manual of apparent comparable size is listed on the Canon support pages.

Most of the pages in the one I have cover trouble shooting.

So yes, I have actually read the documentation.

Have you?


Sorry, I Googled for "canon canoscan 9000f mark ii manual" and didn't
specifically notice that the manual I cited was only for the Mk 1.

And no, I haven't read all 334 pages - but I did notice that it looked
basically similar to what came with my cheap and cheerful (£35)
all-in-one printer/scanner a couple of years ago. Looks like a
retrograde step if the "new improved" model is not so good as its
predecessor.

"However", although it doesn't come with MP Navigator Ex (coming with
Scan Utility and My Image Garden - whatever that is - instead) it *does*
appear to come with ScanGear (according to
http://www.canon.co.uk/scanners/flat..._9000f_markii/ )

So it might be worth finding that and firing it up and - if necessary -
referring to the appropriate part of the Mk 1 manual, because it will
probably be very similar).

Incidentally, when you say that there's very little documentation, are
you referring to hard copy printed stuff? You'll almost certainly find
that most of the documentation will be in the form of an on-screen
manual which will have been installed when you installed the driver, etc.
--
Cheers,
Roger
____________
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 22:24:39 +0000, Roger Mills wrote:

On 15/03/2015 17:05, David wrote:
On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 16:31:09 +0000, Roger Mills wrote:

On 15/03/2015 12:31, David wrote:
Having bought a new Canon scanner I am underwhelmed by the bundled
software.


Have you actually *read* the documentation which came with the scanner
-
including the 334 page on-screen manual (which can be found at
content.etilize.com/User-Manual/1024506887.pdf)?

The scanner comes with MP Navigator Ex for people who want just to be
able to "point and shoot" without getting their hands dirty. But it
also comes with ScanGear which enables you to control the scanner at
driver level. That has several modes - including advanced. I'd be very
surprised if that doesn't do everything you want to do.

Consider yourself very surprised?

Also, it doesn't come with MP Navigator EX.

The manual seems to refer to the MK 1 version (which I don't have)
which came with a much more comprehensive software bundle.

No manual of apparent comparable size is listed on the Canon support
pages.

Most of the pages in the one I have cover trouble shooting.

So yes, I have actually read the documentation.

Have you?


Sorry, I Googled for "canon canoscan 9000f mark ii manual" and didn't
specifically notice that the manual I cited was only for the Mk 1.

And no, I haven't read all 334 pages - but I did notice that it looked
basically similar to what came with my cheap and cheerful (£35)
all-in-one printer/scanner a couple of years ago. Looks like a
retrograde step if the "new improved" model is not so good as its
predecessor.

"However", although it doesn't come with MP Navigator Ex (coming with
Scan Utility and My Image Garden - whatever that is - instead) it *does*
appear to come with ScanGear (according to
http://www.canon.co.uk/scanners/flat..._9000f_markii/
)

So it might be worth finding that and firing it up and - if necessary -
referring to the appropriate part of the Mk 1 manual, because it will
probably be very similar).

Incidentally, when you say that there's very little documentation, are
you referring to hard copy printed stuff? You'll almost certainly find
that most of the documentation will be in the form of an on-screen
manual which will have been installed when you installed the driver,
etc.


I am using ScanGear at the moment. It offers a maximum scan resolution of
1200 DPI.

I haven't yet investigated setting the "large scan" option.

The on-line (which means on the computer) manual tells you lots of trivial
stuff but as far as I can tell it doesn't document much in the way of
technical detail, and certainly doesn't explain anything about the
resolutions supported by the drivers. Just says things like "Use the
Advanced Mode tab to specify color mode, output resolution, image
brightness, color tone, etc. when scanning." but doesn't discuss what
resolutions are available.

It does say, for ScanGear in Advanced Mode

"Output Settings allows you to set the following items:

Output Resolution

Select the resolution to scan at.

The higher the resolution (value), the more detail in your image.

Select a resolution from the options displayed by clicking the button, or
enter a value within the range of 25 dpi to 19200 dpi (in 1 dpi
increments).

"

Which is a terminological inexactitude because if you try to enter
anything above 1200 it tells you that the value is illegal and sets it to
1200.

I've tried ticking some boxes as recommended in another post but I still
can't configure any resolution for scanning pictures above 1200 DPI.

Cheers

Dave R

--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 20:48:09 +0000, fred wrote:

In article , David
writes

I now have Infraview running in batch scanning mode and I have managed to
get the latest Canon driver/utility which will configure up to 1200 DPI,
although the Canon supplied photo utility will still only go up to 600 DPI.

The photos at 1200 DPI are looking O.K. and a single photo is coming in at
under 2 Mb which isn't going to eat up disc space.

Anyway, now dashing through the photo albums a lot faster than my old
scanner.

Glad you're sorted and thanks for feeding back with your results.

One thing that does sound a little odd is your small file sizes, for
1200dpi they do seem awfully small for anything but the smallest prints
or saving with heavy image compression. If you're saving as jpg then it
would be a shame to be working at that level of detail and not saving at
a quality level of at least 95 percent on quality, at certainly at the
processing stage. Quality settings for batch are on the first Irfanview
scanning dialogue where you choose between single and multiple scans,
under Options, bottom right.

One thing to keep in mind with regard to scanning prints is that
unless it's a contact print taken off a glass plate negative onto
glossy paper, 600DPI is going to be 'overkill' in almost all cases.

For anything larger than a 5 x 4 inch print taken off 35mm film, even
300DPI will capture all the detail there is to be captured from such a
print. What you mainly lose with a print is contrast ratio which will
considerably ease the demands on a typical colour flatbed document
scanner (24 bit colour?).

If possible, always try to scan from the original negatives or slides
(colour or black and white), preferably with a high res 48 bit colour
scanner where you'll need a resolution of 2400 to 3600 DPI to avoid
too much loss of detail.

If your only source of material is print, the demands on the scanner
are quite modest since you've already lost contrast information as
well as a loss of linear resolution, this latter loss being ideally
due to the enlargement of the original source negative or slide so not
as real a loss of detail in the original negative/slide.
--
J B Good

On 15/03/2015 16:36, David wrote:
On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 13:54:28 +0000, fred wrote:

In article ,
writes
On Sunday, 15 March 2015 12:31:37 UTC, David wrote:
What software do you use to bulk scan prints?
I think the facilities I need are a one click operation to:
scan picture crop automatically generate file name so the number of
interactions is cut to a minimum.
It would be nice to load in several photos at once and have them
automatically recognised as multiple pictures and saved to different
files, but that would be icing on the cake.

I don't use it for scanning, but http://www.irfanview.com/
has batch processing facilities and the faq says it supports batch
scanning (even without an auto document feeder)

Yes, you select 'single image' or multiple images' from the scanning
dialogue and can select options for the base title eg. IMG, Scan or
Holidays and then choose an auto incrementing number for the suffix with
optional padding. Scans are saved automatically to a chosen folder.

Thereafter you just keep hitting the scan button or preview and then
scan and the scanning dialogue remains open ready for the next scan.

The selectable resolutions will depend on the twain driver provided with
scanner but I'd question the wisdom of scanning above 600dpi for prints,
it will take ages, generate huge files and I doubt the extra resolution
will recover much more detail.

Similarly, I think the recognition of individual images within the
scanning field will also be a function of the driver.

You (o/p) will still be stuck with making fine rotations to square up
the images and Irfanfiew is a little clunky in that respect. Photoshop
is better and there are 'free' editions of CS2 available which have
quite a nice fine rotation mechanism. Gimp (free) may have something
similar.

Well, thanks again.

I now have Infraview running in batch scanning mode and I have managed to
get the latest Canon driver/utility which will configure up to 1200 DPI,
although the Canon supplied photo utility will still only go up to 600 DPI.

The photos at 1200 DPI are looking O.K. and a single photo is coming in at
under 2 Mb which isn't going to eat up disc space.

What format are you saving them as and with what pixel dimensions?

Something doesn't add up here. Either you are saving low quality JPEGs
or the images are tiny since even a humble 6x4 print or postcard at 1200
dpi would be 7k2x4k8 pixels 36Mpixels ~35MB as a highest quality JPEG.
Blurred black cats in coal cellars and white ones in snowstorms
excepted. That is about 6x the detail that a typical 35mm negative film
can support (very slow films can do better).

A reasonable scan size for a 6x4 is around 600dpi if it is tack sharp or
less if it isn't.

The interesting bit (possibly) is that it doesn't do one full scan then
split the pictures afterwards in software.
It splits the pictures up in preview, then does multiple scans, one per
picture.
Presumably this allows it to do in flight fixing (if required) for each
picture individually but it does make for slower scanning.

Anyway, now dashing through the photo albums a lot faster than my old
scanner.

Check that the image quality is sufficient for your needs or you will
have to do it all again. A rough heuristic is that for colour JPEGs
average file size as a high quality JPEG is around 1byte/pixel and about
half that for pure monochrome images.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 20:48:09 +0000, fred wrote:

In article , David
writes

I now have Infraview running in batch scanning mode and I have managed
to get the latest Canon driver/utility which will configure up to 1200
DPI, although the Canon supplied photo utility will still only go up to
600 DPI.

The photos at 1200 DPI are looking O.K. and a single photo is coming in
at under 2 Mb which isn't going to eat up disc space.

Anyway, now dashing through the photo albums a lot faster than my old
scanner.

Glad you're sorted and thanks for feeding back with your results.

One thing that does sound a little odd is your small file sizes, for
1200dpi they do seem awfully small for anything but the smallest prints
or saving with heavy image compression. If you're saving as jpg then it
would be a shame to be working at that level of detail and not saving at
a quality level of at least 95 percent on quality, at certainly at the
processing stage. Quality settings for batch are on the first Irfanview
scanning dialogue where you choose between single and multiple scans,
under Options, bottom right.

You are right about strange things going on.
The DPI count doesn't seem to make much difference to the file size.
It still seems to come out around 4-5 Mb.

For instance I have a .jpg file which has the Image information that it is
12288 * 8320 pixels, vertical and horizontal resolution of 2400 dpi and
bit depth of 24. Size 4.66 Mb.

I have another scan (from Paint, I think) of the same test picture which
is reported as 6096 * 4128 1200 * 1200 dpi and 24 bit colour. Size is 4.08
Mb.

The Save quality setting in IrfanView is 80%.

The estimated size for 1200 dpi from the ScanGear driver/front end
(supplied by Canon) is 73.12 Mb.

Scanning with IrfanView front ended by ScanGear is giving quite small file
sizes - 1.69 Mb for 1200 * 1200 and 521 Kb for 600 * 600.

The 600 bpi file within the IrfanView program seems to be 18.28 Mb which
matches the prediction in the ScanGear front end.

So something is happening during the automatic saving by the batch
scanning process which is massively compressing the picture data.

Sigh!

More software configuration to bugger about with.


Cheers


Dave R



--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 12:31:34 +0000, David wrote:

Having bought a new Canon scanner I am underwhelmed by the bundled
software.

Good points - put a single photo of any size in the scanner and push the
auto scan button and it quickly scans the picture and crops to the
edges.

Bad points - despite the alleged high possible resolutions it doesn't
seem to offer more than 600 dpi via the configuration utility and I
can't even get it to auto scan at that resolution - obviously not
understanding how the (undocumented) features work.

So I am contemplating using other software. I thought it came with
Photoshop Elements but it turns out that was only the MK 1 version, not
the MK 2 that I have.

So - bundled software apparently not much good, so use something else.

TWAIN compliant scanner, so a lot of software packages can use it.
I have had acceptable results with Windows Paint - I can select the
resolution beyond 300/600 DPI but this scans to a buffer and needs
manually cropping and saving, so isn't good for bulk scanning loads of
photos.

Given the above, there seem to be two routes to go:

(1) Free or paid scanner software - I know about Vuescan because I
helped a friend get an old semi-professional SCSI scanner set up. Google
doesn't really turn up much else. The Standard Edition is $39.95 (about
£27) but doesn't support scanning of slides/negatives and the Pro
Edition is $89.95 (about £61).

(2) Photo manipulation software such as Photoshop Elements 13 (about £65
from Amazon - 11 and 12 are about £10 more!). GIMP is free but previous
experience suggests that it is possibly too powerful and complex for
this simple application.

So, scanner users.

What software do you use to bulk scan prints?

I think the facilities I need are a one click operation to:

scan picture

crop automatically

generate file name

so the number of interactions is cut to a minimum.

It would be nice to load in several photos at once and have them
automatically recognised as multiple pictures and saved to different
files, but that would be icing on the cake.

Well, a lot of progress has been made, and I am severely embarrassed.

Every DPI dialogue box I have tried to hand edit (non with drop down
lists) has refused to change, but somehow I missed hand editing the box in
the Advanced Mode tab of ScanGear, assuming that since the drop down list
stopped at 1200 dpi then that was the maximum supported by the utility/
driver.

I now have established that it will select in 1 dot increments up to 1200
dpi but above that it rounds up to the next highest standard value - that
is 1201 dpi rounds up to 2400 and 2401 rounds up to 4800.

IrfanView has proved a blessing for automating the bulk capture of prints
but is managing to compress the image considerably which may remove any
benefits from higher resolution scanning. Noted that there is a general
view in this thread that scanning at high dpi for photographic prints
confers little if any benefit (I am still pondering this).

So I am more pleased with my purchase than I was a day or so ago.

The utility/driver software can identify multiple prints on the scanner
bed and treat them as individual scans when working with compatible
software so I have my icing on the cake.


I am still bemused that Canon offer two different drivers - one with
constraints over the resolution and another which supports the higher
resolution. This is not really clear at the start from their documentation.

Anyway, thanks for all the help.

Cheers

Dave R

--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

In article , David
writes

The Save quality setting in IrfanView is 80%.

The estimated size for 1200 dpi from the ScanGear driver/front end
(supplied by Canon) is 73.12 Mb.

That would appear to be the raw image size 6096 x 4128 x 3 bytes (24bits
per pixel) = 75M

Scanning with IrfanView front ended by ScanGear is giving quite small file
sizes - 1.69 Mb for 1200 * 1200 and 521 Kb for 600 * 600.

The 600 bpi file within the IrfanView program seems to be 18.28 Mb which
matches the prediction in the ScanGear front end.

So something is happening during the automatic saving by the batch
scanning process which is massively compressing the picture data.

Try setting the jpg quality to 100% to see if the file sizes match the
predicted 1byte per pix suggested by another poster. If you are
squishing at 80% then you will be dealing with some pic dependent
unknowns which it would be best to eliminate for your size tests.

I'd suggest that scanning 1200 and squishing to 80% is a bit counter
productive quality wise, 600 with 95-100% qual would preserve more
detail.

--
fred
it's a ba-na-na . . . .

In article , David
writes

IrfanView has proved a blessing for automating the bulk capture of prints
but is managing to compress the image considerably which may remove any
benefits from higher resolution scanning. Noted that there is a general
view in this thread that scanning at high dpi for photographic prints
confers little if any benefit (I am still pondering this).

Irfanview will only do what you tell it to do, jpg compression is
configurable as previously mentioned at anything from 0-100% (quality),
either from the options button in the pre-scan dialogue box or the or
the JPEG/GIF settings box that opens every time you perform a File
Save\Save As operation. The setting is global.

--
fred
it's a ba-na-na . . . .

David wrote:
I now have established that it will select in 1 dot increments up to 1200
dpi but above that it rounds up to the next highest standard value - that
is 1201 dpi rounds up to 2400 and 2401 rounds up to 4800.

I *almost* suggested this might be the case when I read earlier
discussion.


IrfanView has proved a blessing for automating the bulk capture of prints
but is managing to compress the image considerably which may remove any
benefits from higher resolution scanning. Noted that there is a general
view in this thread that scanning at high dpi for photographic prints
confers little if any benefit (I am still pondering this).

I agree with other comments here, scanning a *print* at anything more
than around 600dpi is pointless. With negatives and slides you can
probably go to the best the scanner can manage and then 'tune' it a
bit to get the best compromise between image size and quality.

--
Chris Green
·

On Tue, 17 Mar 2015 09:50:53 +0000, cl wrote:

David wrote:
I now have established that it will select in 1 dot increments up to
1200 dpi but above that it rounds up to the next highest standard value
- that is 1201 dpi rounds up to 2400 and 2401 rounds up to 4800.

I *almost* suggested this might be the case when I read earlier
discussion.


IrfanView has proved a blessing for automating the bulk capture of
prints but is managing to compress the image considerably which may
remove any benefits from higher resolution scanning. Noted that there
is a general view in this thread that scanning at high dpi for
photographic prints confers little if any benefit (I am still pondering
this).

I agree with other comments here, scanning a *print* at anything more
than around 600dpi is pointless. With negatives and slides you can
probably go to the best the scanner can manage and then 'tune' it a bit
to get the best compromise between image size and quality.

Out of interest, if you want (for some reason) to scan a small print then
blow it up four or five times, is it better to scan at a higher DPI (which
will then presumably scale one to one with pixels on a printer or display)
or scan at a lower DPI then use software to "stretch" the picture
(presumably by guessing what the extra pixels might look like from those
immediately adjacent).

Or do both give much the same result?

Cheers


Dave R

--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

On 17/03/2015 11:25, David wrote:


Out of interest, if you want (for some reason) to scan a small print then
blow it up four or five times, is it better to scan at a higher DPI (which
will then presumably scale one to one with pixels on a printer or display)
or scan at a lower DPI then use software to "stretch" the picture
(presumably by guessing what the extra pixels might look like from those
immediately adjacent).

Or do both give much the same result?


You won't get exactly the same result because interpolation is only a
guess, as opposed to actually "seeing" the fine detail. In theory at any
rate - scanning at a higher resolution should give better results. It's
unlikely to make things worse. Whether or not it is actually better will
depend on the effective resolution of the print which, in turn, will
depend on the chemistry of the film and its processing.
--
Cheers,
Roger
____________
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 16:16:06 +0000, fred wrote:


Another has confirmed that GIMP has a useful fine rotation feature so
you might want to try that.

You don't need to install software just to rotate images, use Windows
Explorer. Just select the images, right click and select rotate left
or right to choice. It works with the standard Windows selection
commands as well.

On 17/03/2015 22:48, Peter Johnson wrote:
On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 16:16:06 +0000, wrote:


Another has confirmed that GIMP has a useful fine rotation feature so
you might want to try that.

You don't need to install software just to rotate images, use Windows
Explorer. Just select the images, right click and select rotate left
or right to choice. It works with the standard Windows selection
commands as well.

Well, if you want to rotate it by 90 degrees, yes. But the previous
poster was talking about *fine* rotation - e.g. 1.75 degrees to make the
horizon horizontal. Can Windows Explorer *really* do that?
--
Cheers,
Roger
____________
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

On 17 Mar 2015 11:25:22 GMT, David wrote:

On Tue, 17 Mar 2015 09:50:53 +0000, cl wrote:

David wrote:
I now have established that it will select in 1 dot increments up to
1200 dpi but above that it rounds up to the next highest standard value
- that is 1201 dpi rounds up to 2400 and 2401 rounds up to 4800.

I *almost* suggested this might be the case when I read earlier
discussion.


IrfanView has proved a blessing for automating the bulk capture of
prints but is managing to compress the image considerably which may
remove any benefits from higher resolution scanning. Noted that there
is a general view in this thread that scanning at high dpi for
photographic prints confers little if any benefit (I am still pondering
this).

I agree with other comments here, scanning a *print* at anything more
than around 600dpi is pointless. With negatives and slides you can
probably go to the best the scanner can manage and then 'tune' it a bit
to get the best compromise between image size and quality.

Out of interest, if you want (for some reason) to scan a small print then
blow it up four or five times, is it better to scan at a higher DPI (which
will then presumably scale one to one with pixels on a printer or display)
or scan at a lower DPI then use software to "stretch" the picture
(presumably by guessing what the extra pixels might look like from those
immediately adjacent).

Or do both give much the same result?


The former. You want to extract as much detail from a small print,
that was either a contact print or just a very slight enlargement of
the original negative, which may well contain much finer detail than
the more usual size of print.

An unusually small print has every possibility of containing almost
as much detail as an 10 by 8 print so is worth scanning at higher than
normal resolutions (say 1200 or even 2400 dpi), even if it's only to
do a test scan to check whether such unusually high detail exists.

Scanning at 'normal' 600dpi followed by software enlargement will, at
best, only result in a rather indifferent image quality.
--
J B Good

On Tue, 17 Mar 2015 23:16:10 +0000, Roger Mills
wrote:

On 17/03/2015 22:48, Peter Johnson wrote:
On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 16:16:06 +0000, wrote:


Another has confirmed that GIMP has a useful fine rotation feature so
you might want to try that.

You don't need to install software just to rotate images, use Windows
Explorer. Just select the images, right click and select rotate left
or right to choice. It works with the standard Windows selection
commands as well.

Well, if you want to rotate it by 90 degrees, yes. But the previous
poster was talking about *fine* rotation - e.g. 1.75 degrees to make the
horizon horizontal. Can Windows Explorer *really* do that?

A superb feature that I have only found in ScanSoft's PaperPort is
being able to drag a line through two points you want to be horizontal
and release and the image is redrawn with excellent precision.

snip

Another has confirmed that GIMP has a useful fine rotation feature so
you might want to try that.

Oh, wait a minute, latest version of Irfanview has rotate to line, you
draw a line on the image that over an edge/line that you want to be
vertical or horizontal, confirm the action and the image is rotated
accordingly. This means that you could do it all in Irfanview, first
batch capture a whole bundle then walk through them, correcting for
rotation. Actually better I think than the old Photoshop method IMV as
you can zoom in before drawing your snap-to line. Certainly worth a
play.

Either the Canon software or IrfanView (can't remember which) claims to
automatically straighten the image if it is a few degrees out.

Presumably by checking the alignment of the edges of the print.

Current challenge is that the Canon software doesn't seem to have the
concept of a network printer.
If you try and configure the "Copy" function it only offers local printers
(that is, just the 'soft' Fax and Microsoft XPS Document Writer) and won't
print from My Image Garden because there is no printer configured.
All in all not the easiest software package to use.

Cheers

Dave R

--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

In message , David
writes

Having bought a new Canon scanner I am underwhelmed by the bundled
software.

Reading

http://www.scantips.com/

may help
--
David