Looking for SCSI Linux Scanners

Chacham asks: "There's a lot of scanners out there, and I'd like to buy one. I first checked the Ask Slashdot archives and found this, but at over a year old I thought it might be good for an update. I'm looking for a SCSI, Linux supported, color scanner. Although price will eventually play a role in which I purchase (probably up to US $500), I would like to hear comments with emphasis on quality. Speed is nice, but unless it's super slow, I'll go for quality. Deja lists scanners in a poll but it doesn't look like there are enough submissions for a real comparison. I was looking at SANE supported scanners. Many are listed as alpha or beta, and only a few as stable. I've been hearing good things about HP scanners, but with alpha support under SANE, I'm not so sure it's a good idea. Although, I guess I don't need to use SANE; are there other good packages out there? "

UMAX

[jbridge21]

I don't know if you can find one anymore, but my UMAX Vista S6E works really well. Other UMAX's are supported pretty well too, I think.
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HP HP HP

[Zurk]

my HP works great under SANE..and its auto sheet feeder works great too. i'd recommend the high end HPs..really nice scanners.

Re:HP HP HP

[Zurk]

mines a 6250C BTW.

If you want to use HP

[ehovland]

I suggest using XVscan [tummy.com]. It costs $50, is supported by a company and is really simple to use.

I have used SANE with beta drivers and have had good luck, very few glitches. So it would not be a bad idea to consider scanners in the beta list. No experience with alpha though.

Microteck X6EL

[SwellJoe]

We've been using a Scanmaker X6EL for a few months now and it works like a champ.

Beautiful output, works nicely with Sane, up to legal size paper, and the included SCSI card works fine. It's quite fast and affordable as well.

The driver is supposedly still alpha but seems pretty close to stable to me (the preview window has issues with some window managers).

The only unsupported bit is the 'lightlid' which provides backlighting for scanning negatives and slides. Super cool, but still needs work in sane.

Re:HP HP HP

[Chacham]

Kewl.

I'm actually looking at a 6350c. It, together with the transparency adapter, costs just over 500, from a Pricewatch quote that I just checked.

Another thing on my mind, is playing with images. I'm going to have to seriously try TheGimp, but, being I have never relaly tried it in the past, I wonder if it will scale up to PSP or Photoshop. (I'm assuming it does; I have just never tried it for more than a few minutes.)

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Re:UMAX

[(startx)]

The UMAX SCSI scanners are pretty well supported, but DO NOT get a parallel or USB UMAX scanner, they are completely unsuported becuase UMAX made the protocols and such completely proprietary.

How about... a parallel scanner!

[inburito]

Microtek Scanmaker X6. This is a parallel port scanner that will work with linux and costs less than 100$ Why? Because it seems to really be a scsi scanner that just works over parallel port and a nice little pportscsi patch to kernel will take care of that minor inconvienience. Check this [linuxnewbie.org] for more.

See the website

[bluGill]

Supported Scanners [mostang.com] Some USB scanners are now supprted, but expect USB support to be reworked in a year or two once people figgure out how USB works best. (ie right now USB is in a state of quick hacks and amazement that things work. Things are looking better, as work is going on, but I get the feeling that the programers are not sure how to do USB best/right

There are scsi scanners that are unsupported. There are one or two parrelle scanners that happen to work. There are usb scanners that will never work, and usb scanners where the manufacture hopes they will work soon.

I have a microtek V6USL which works just fine, though only were the very latests backend (which I don't belive is intigrated into any current versuion of SANE yet)

some UMAX scanners

[rbf]

Some UMAX scanners work great, others not at all. I have a Astra 1200s and it works very well! It's speed is quite acceptable and it's quality is seems to be great. Although the scanner itself supports higher resolutions then SANE can actually handle. :( I have heard several people say the 1220s works as well as the 1200s. As usual YMMV!

Color management in Linux

[dufke]

One thing I have noticed with the Gimp, is the apparant lack of ICC/ICM color management. I'm afraid this would seriously reduce the usefullness of the software in a proffessional (sp?) setting. To tell you to truth, I have never encountered any kind of color management in Linux (ok, apart from 'gamma' settings).

I wonder how difficult implementing ICM on Linux would be. I have been trying to find out how holds any patents on the subject, but have failed thus far. Anyone know anything about this?

dufke

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UNAX Astra 610S

[planet_hoth]

I picked up a UMAX Astra 610S SCSI scanner last summer, it works just fine with Linux and sane.

Speed is what you'd expect from SCSI (nice and fast, esp. compared to parallel port models.) The scan quality is as good as other (windows-based) scanners I've seen.

Only bad thing I have to say about it is that dark photographs come out slightly murky; if you're scanning in bright stuff there's no problem. I don't know if this is a by-product of the scanner itself, the sane drivers, or my inexperience. ;)

Don't bother with the cheapo SCSI card that comes with it: I couldn't even get it to work from windows 95. I bought an adaptec; Red Hat automagically detected and configured it.

Can't beat it on price; I got it for around $80.

Epson GT-7000

[Tet]

I eventually decided to go with the Epson GT-7000 SCSI. It was far from the cheapest option (£180 -- about US$290), but it was worth every penny. It's probably the single best buy I've made for my computer. Extremely good quality, very fast, and it works like a dream with SANE. Everything I could ask for, basically. Avoid low end scanners. They tend to scan too dark, and correct it later in software, but the results are never as good as those from a better scanner.