Searching for a Decent Scanner? 425
Stumped about Scanners asks: "My little sister's scanner is acting up, so she's in the market for a new one. However, the software she wishes to use it with (some funkadelic 'music OCR' thing that lets you scan sheet music and transforms it automagically into MIDI files) claims that it doesn't work too well with HP scanners. And, truth be told, I've never known much about which scanners are good and which are crap. So, which scanners lately are decent? Which are crap? I know that DPI matters very little (just like it does in printers)-- it's quality that matters. Could the SlashDot community provide some info on which scanners (some from HP and some not from HP) are decent? Are there any quasi-reputable sites (a la Tom's Hardware?) that have reviews on such things?"
Hey boss! "The TWAIN!!" (Score:5, Informative)
Just remember: "TWAIN" not "WIA" not "All-in-one"
Re:Hey boss! "The TWAIN!!" (Score:4, Informative)
But now a days, plenty of companies make all in ones that are really nice pieces of equipment.... I'd specifically mention HP & Canon in this category myself... the laser ones anyway, no experience with the inkjet ones.
HP 33xx series has a limited life span (Score:4, Informative)
Prior to this meltdown, I was pretty pleased with the unit. Getting it to play nice with OS X Panther was a royal bear, but that problem was fixed by the time that Panther had been out about a year.
I wanted to buy one of the Canon or Samsung models to replace it, but neither offered OS X drivers for their multifunction devices. If I didn't have such a limited amount of space, I would have bought a separate printer, copier, and scanner. Separately, they wouldn't have had much of a premium over all-in-one units.
I ended up buying another HP. Unless you want to spend a couple thousand on industrial grade machines, they're pretty much the only game in town for laser all-in-ones for OS X.
I will now proceed to save your life (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hey boss! "The TWAIN!!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hey boss! "The TWAIN!!" (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hey boss! "The TWAIN!!" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hey boss! "The TWAIN!!" (Score:4, Informative)
175 upmoderated posts and not a lot of real info.
There are two common consumer level scanners. CCD based and CMOS. Both types are good for 99.9% of consumer requirements of resolution and colour accuracy. So I suppose that price, driver quality, and reliability come into play as discriminating factors in your purchase.
Most scanners are TWAIN compliant nowadays, and if you use vuescan then the software is not a major differentiator either.
CCD based is the traditional scanner as you know it. Every manufacturer uses it except Canon's LIDE based models. Works well and can scan in 3 dimensional objects and the like. Epson's models are quite good, UMAX are lower quality but generally cheaper. HP I haven't had any recent experience with, but they have been OK in the past.
CMOS based scanners are the basis of Canon's LIDE lineup. CMOS based systems were/are considered the holy grail of imaging systems because they are less power consuming and cheaper to manufacture than CCD based units. This is why Canon's scanners can be powered via USB and make decent portable units. Canon manages to compensate for CMOS' inherently noiser systems by a proprietary calibration technique. This is why most other manufacturers are behind Canon in CMOS based imagers for scanning. The biggest drawback to CMOS based scanners are the lack of focal depth in three dimensional or thicker objects. Since sheet music is flat a CMOS based system may good for your sister if she values portability. The lack of a wall wart is a bonus to me and reduces the tangle of cables as well.
Reliability wise, I've never had too much an issue with scanners unless they've been roughly transported or dropped.
Re:Hey boss! "The TWAIN!!" (Score:2)
Or, put another way, why can't people coming up with names for new software technologies at least do a quick google search to make sure they aren't already using a fairly well-known acronym? Sheesh.
Re:Hey boss! "The TWAIN!!" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hey boss! "The TWAIN!!" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hey boss! "The TWAIN!!" (Score:3, Insightful)
The joke, and it IS a joke, gets a good laugh at presentations to the uniformed and often causes them to go read up on the subject (something it is increasingly hard to get decision makers to do).
HP (Score:2)
Re:HP (Score:2)
Never got the TWAIN interface working well enough for Photoshop to scan more than 1 image without the scan preview window crashing.
Re:HP (Score:2)
Re:HP (Score:2)
OTOH, at my office we just got an Officejet 6210 all-in-one a few weeks ago. It's performing quite well, although the ADF occasionally feeds two sheets if they haven't been fanned.
Re:HP (Score:2)
The Windows installation took about 45 minutes, with many interesting words being said along the way.
The Linux installation, including downloading and installing the Debian packages for the HP office printer project (or whatever it's called) took less than ten minutes. And it worked perf
Re:HP (Score:2)
I didn't bother checking about my HP 36-something-something. I recently switched to using Ubuntu, and SANE [sane-project.org] won't touch my HP with a bargepole.
It works fairly well with Windows, but uses some ActiveX functionality for its document store/display which IE tends to worry about being a security issue. Might scare the uninitiated.
funny story... (Score:4, Informative)
It took them about an hour of putzing with SCSI drivers and trying different settings to get it to work 100% (getting the document feeder to work properly).
When they were done, I stuck my Knoppix 3.7 CD in the machine and started it up. I opened XSANE, and just started scanning. Knoppix saw the scanner, recognized that it had a document feeder, and I was able to start scanning with it immediately.
Re:funny story... (Score:4, Informative)
I guess I should have posted a link to begin with, duh. I just don't normally think of
fScanX [killerbytes.com]
Seeing a 5650 run at 60+ pages/minute can induce some serious gadget lust
Add to Question (Score:5, Interesting)
I generally find that the models on the shelf in CompUSA and the like are not supported by SANE (at least the ones that are on the less expensive end). Meanwhile, the ones that SANE says they support are all more than a month or two old. I don't know why so much of the computer industry feels the need to put out a new model number with essentially the same functionality every couple of months, but printers and scanners in particular seem to suffer from that. It makes it difficult for those of us using free drivers to keep up with.
What's a good, low-end, *current* scanner that you can get that works with SANE?
-Rob
Re:Add to Question (Score:5, Interesting)
feyr my SANE-ity
Re:Add to Question (Score:3, Insightful)
SANE (Linux) and VueScan (Mac), on the other hand, will drive it just fine.
OTOH, the stepper motors are making some really, really odd noises these days... so I'll be watching the recommendations this topic pulls out with interest.
My general rule of hardware: If it only works with the manufacturer's software, it's crap. The number of times I've had manufacturers just stop suppor
Re:Add to Question (Score:2)
This comes from over a year of working with an old HP PSC 950 on FC1 and every version of Ubuntu through Breezy.
Re:Add to Question (Score:3, Interesting)
go EPSON (Score:5, Informative)
Re:go EPSON (Score:3, Informative)
I have an Epson Perfection 1260 flatbed scanner and it works perfectly, right out of the box under GNU/Linux. The only tricky part had to do with Epson's programming that resides inside the scanner--old SANE software would do something with the stepper motor that it would burn itself out if you scanned above 200DPI or so (if you kill your Epson Perfection 1260, [linuxhacker.org] it can be fixed [tn-home.de]). I figured that it's silly to call this a SANE bug because no device should allow any series of commands to burn itself out. I m
Well... (Score:5, Informative)
Epson and Microtek are probably the best 100-400 scanners. You get what you pay for if you go less than that.
I don't like Epson's drivers. They didn't give me as much control over the scan as the Microtek ones do. The Microtek drivers have a few annoyances, but are full-featured.
Overall, for a good average user, a $150 scanner from Microtek or Epson would be a good investment.
Tom's Hardware (Score:4, Informative)
Well, Tom's Hardware does have some scanner reviews. Although I don't know if they have the detail you're looking for:
http://www17.tomshardware.com/search/search.html?
http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/20020327/ind
Enter it yourself (Score:5, Interesting)
Save yourself time and money. Get a good keyboard, synth module, and a sequencer and do it that way. Scanning it to midi just doesn't ever work right.
Re:Enter it yourself (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Enter it yourself (Score:2)
Still, I've found it is less time consuming just to enter the stuff. Most things are doubled in other instruments anyhow, so you just copy and paste.....
How about for Linux? (Score:2)
Dlugar
Re:How about for Linux? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've used Rosegarden [rosegardenmusic.com] to enter a few pieces of music, and it's pretty good. I tend to focus more on tweaking the output to look exactly the way I want, and Rosegarden's output to Lilypond [lilypond.org] needed a fair bit of tweaking. Well, rewriting. :-)
There's probably a chance that Rosegarden's export to MUP [arkkra.com] or PMX [icking-music-archive.org] or (various other options) works better. I've only recently started using Lilypond (after using MusixTeX for a while), so I'm probably not doing things in the most efficient way.
As mentioned by the AC,
Re:Enter it yourself (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe you haven't looked at the price of scanners lately? Buying all that other gear won't save any money. She already has the software.
It will probably save a lot of time, except if his sister: (1) is not a skilled keyboard musician, (2) does not sight-read, and (3) the music she's scanning is not overly complex, then the software conversion can save time. I speak from experience, as a geek who has worked with studio musi
Re:Enter it yourself (Score:3, Interesting)
3 is doubtful. I couldn't get any of the scanning software I have (Scoreperfect I think its called, but I don't remember) to do a simple sheet from Green Day.
HP (Score:2, Interesting)
I would think that it is more the OCR software that would have more of an impact on the quality of the output of music to the computer.
Just my 2 pennies.
Canon LIDE 20 (Score:4, Informative)
Canon LIDE 30 (Score:5, Informative)
I believe the current model in this line is the LiDE 35, but all of the above should apply.
Re:Canon LIDE 30 (Score:3, Informative)
Scanners (Score:2, Informative)
Canon (Score:4, Informative)
Combining my US$100 Canon scanner (cant remember the specific model; think it was a 4200F) and my Canon Pixma iP5000 printer (US$200), I can copy printed material and get very good reproductions.
If you want to go cheaper, they have a good selection of Photo scanners from $50 to $80.
If you have one of a few supported Canon printer models, you can get a 'scanner' cartridge that turns your printer into a sheet-feed scanner.
I concur (Score:2)
avoid umax (Score:2)
My last Umax scanner (with both USB & SCSI connections) was fantastic until XP came out. Then >boom, no free driver support. You can get a driver but it costs you $20 to order a CD from their website. No download version of it either.
I still have the Umax scanner on a shelf,waiting for them to release a free driver, but I'd only buy HP at this point.
Re:avoid umax (Score:2)
digital camera (Score:5, Interesting)
Tried it, but ... (Score:3, Informative)
It's a passable "poor-man's" solution: it works, but the image tends to be geometrically distorted, with colour fringing around letters. Lighting can be a bit tricky, too. (These problems can be fixed with the right equipment, but scanners are cheap; certainly cheaper than the requisite photographic equipment.)
If you need a record in a hurry, it's an option. I'm not sure that the output would work well in most OCR
Re:digital camera (Score:3, Interesting)
A 100-image-per-minute duplex scanner costs $1200 or more and has no other uses. A digital camera that could perform the work mentioned in the article might cost $400-600 and has plenty of uses besides.
By the way, I can easily do 100 images per minute with my digital camera scanning. You just set all the paper up in a stack on a music stand or other convenient place, fix the whit
Go for CCD types (Score:2)
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question362.
How about with Feeders? (Score:2)
I'd also like the ability to link an image of a bill to a line in Quicken or Money so I don' thave to store the original paper forever. Any ideas there?
Well I like (Score:5, Funny)
I can easily program all of my favorite drivers in in no time. But the Bearcats can be programmed for you at the track at the Race-Scan trucks.
Epson!! (Score:2)
They are TWAIN compatible, have excellent quality and good software (TWAIN driver interface is nice too). Plus, they have models that aren't too pricey.
As a bonus, the 3170 I have (since disco'ed - but new ones are similar) actually do very well at scanning Negatives/Slides. I have a $2,500 dedicated slide scanner from some years back, and my Epson flatbed give me better quality - something I did NOT expect.
Hope t
DPI ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, you know wrong.
DPI is to all intents and purposes, the same as "resolution" which is not something you do at New Years.
If you want to scan something, the more of it's surface you can scan, the better.
So yeah, I'd say it DOES matter.
Re:DPI ? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:DPI ? (Score:3, Informative)
Did some testing once (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want very good color reproductions, try it sometimes - could prove interest
Re:DPI ? (Score:2, Informative)
Most scanners can scan at over 800 DPI, which is WAY higher than almost anybody needs for anything. 800DPI takes forever, and generates an enourmous image for an 8.5x11 sheet of paper (Think 60 Meg).
Re:DPI ? (Score:5, Informative)
A very good illustration of this is with color scanning. If you buy an expensive scanner its color accuracy should be quite good. If you buy a cheap scanner, not so much. Something that is common is getting dark blue for black.
Ah! You say, if you *really* care about the color accuracy (and who does?) then you just "apply a filter" in Photoshop. Not so fast -- if black comes in as dark blue, the question is what does dark blue come in as? if it also comes in as dark blue you just lost information and it can't be recovered.
Even if there is little information loss, "just" compressing of color space then it is something a bit beyond a simple filter. Color matching software is about the only way to deal with this problem, something Apple provides out of the box and is little used elsewhere.
My first scanner was a UMAX 1200 and with a scan target and some software I was able to create a color match profile for that scanner. The improvement in scan quality was very significant.
The short of it? It doesn't really matter if you scanner can go to 48000000 dpi if all of those "dots" are garbage. That's why getting a quality scanner is important. Scanning in a resolution higher than you will use is also a waste of time and storage, but that is another matter.
For digital cameras you get the same issues as with scanners. Ooo! Its 500 Mega Pixels! Means absolutely nothing if the reds are washed out, the blacks are blue, etc.
And printers are even more fun because people use different inks on different papers so color matching is even more hit and miss. But the original weakening of DPI as being useful to gauge printer output was when inkjet printer resolution started getting ramped up.
The problem is that the printer could place, say, 720 dots in an inch, but each dot was maybe 1/72 inch across (from memory -- at this point I don't remember the actual size of a dot on the inkjets as I don't use them). So all you got out of the 720 DPI was overly wet paper. (Well, it also allowed some smoothing of diagonals, but considering the bleeding problem with inkjets that point is of questionable value.)
Thoromyr
Re:DPI ? (Score:5, Insightful)
What would you rather have, a 300dpi scan that is crystal clear (if a bit jaggy under a magnifier), or a 1200dpi scan that renders its blurriness in incredible resolution, and at about 16x the file size?
If your scanner doesn't have good glass under the hood, it makes no difference how fine the CCD/CMOS resolution is.
MOD PARENT UP, MOD GRANDPARENT DOWN (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:DPI ? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, YOU know wrong. DPI doesn't matter for spit; any new scanner sold these days will use a greater resolution than most people will ever need. Just like all xMP digital cameras are not equal - the quality of the optics goes a long way toward determining final quality; I'd take a 3MP cam with Nikkor or Leica optics over some roody-poot 1000MP camera.
Chances are, the 600 DPI Epson will produce better quality scans than that 3600 DPI (interpolated) from Brand J (for junk).
Get a clue before you start correcting folks.
Re:DPI ? (Score:3, Funny)
I then decided not to say anything, hoping noone would notice. And then you had to come and confuse everyone with facts. You just broke every Slashdot tradition I hold dear. I hope you're satisfied.
Re:DPI ? (Score:2)
DPI is to all intents and purposes, the same as "resolution" which is not something you do at New Years.
I think the article submitter knows what DPI means. But like him, I've heard that DPI is mostly a meaningless statistic touted by the scanner makers. This is especially true if the scanner is going to only be used for OCR of music, where beyond a certain resolution more DPI is useless.
There is more to scanners than DPI obviously. In inkjet printers you get bleed, and other effects from one dot to anoth
Re:DPI ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Also a high quality 1200 dpi scanner can in fact create better scans than a low quality 2400dpi scanner.
There are special cases where huge DPI is necessary (scanning negatives for example) but for sheet music and normal photos, I'm not sure you could ev
High DPI is best for black and white OCR (Score:2)
Basic information (Score:3, Informative)
Here are a couple of sites to get you started: http://www.viewz.com/shoppingguide/scanner.shtml [viewz.com] (not my favorite, but it's alright as far as learning the very basics. You just have to realize the site is aimed towards mom-and-pop).
here's the wikipedia entry:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_scanner [wikipedia.org]
Not any info on specific scanners in either of these, but should be a good jumping-off point to understanding the benchmarks.
HP ScanJet 4600 (Score:3, Informative)
See thru top, small, light, cheap, reasonable quality. One of the cool things is you can scan 'anything'. If needed, you can flip it over or lift it up and scan the side of your face. Or any other 3D object.
Labels for the front edge buttons are printed on both faces of the lid.
Also (Score:2)
14" Legal sheets? (Score:2)
I haven't seen one in years. My company once had a very pricy HP scanner that had a document feeder. Even that one wouldn't scan 14" paper. It only got the first 12" or so and tried to do the rest as a separate sheet.
Anybody know of "bigger" ( 8.5x11) scanners? (Score:2)
So what I need is something with larger dimensions, because I have a lot of artwork that is bigger than a regular sheet of paper. I wonder if there's a good set of "oversized" scanners that are not too expensive to buy
Depth of field (Score:2)
One non-obvious place to read about scanners is the forum at http://www.pgdp.org/ [pgdp.org] (distributed proofreading for project Gutenberg).
Canon CanoScan N650U (Score:2)
They're a little older, so you can probably pick one up for like $20 now.
Music OCR (Score:2)
I'm a pianist, and I've tried using several different "Music OCR" things. None of them work well enough to save any time. It's always faster to just sightread the music while playing on a MIDI keyboard.
Maybe sis should spend less time playing on her computer and more time practicing her sight reading!
Ask Slashdot: The New Yahoo? (Score:2, Funny)
HP PSC1315 multifunction (Score:2, Informative)
Can't speak about the quality, though. I don't really have any references. But it is nice to be able to copy stuff w/o running to the copy shop. And all in the same space as my previous HP inkjet.
The print function wasn't quite as easy to set up. There was
rent-a-scanner? (Score:2)
Scanning a stack of pictures? (Score:2)
That's the feature I'm looking for. I've got a bunch of old pictures that I'd like to share online, but I don't want to have to scan them one at a time.
Uh... ask the vendor? (Score:2)
So what does the software vendor recommend? Seems simple enough to ask them?
Not the HP Scanjet 4670 (Score:2)
Reaons for an old scanner to act up (Score:2)
The only reason I would have otherwise to upgrade would be speed. My first scanner was a tripple pass model and newer models were single pass. Models after that increased in terms
Canon LIDE (Score:2, Informative)
$49.99
USB+power in one cable
Pretty good quality. Very small size.
Canon LiDE (Score:3, Interesting)
I've also had them make copies of photos that had supposed 'protection' against copying (ie: watermark that would show up when scanned). Never saw the watermark, must be that the led-based tech in the canon product foils that method.
Canon LiDE 60 (Score:2, Interesting)
Canoscan 5200f works well with notation OCR soft (Score:3, Informative)
I've used it before with the package that comes with sibelius and it works a treat.
It's also a damn fine film scanner for doing hobby stuff (it's got FARE level 2 which will do some pretty impressive retouching to remove scratches and particles)
Review site and experience (Score:3, Informative)
I've personally used Apple, HP, Epson, Memorex (Artec), Microtek and Canon scanners. My personal scanner is a Canon CanoScan 8400F. There's probably a newer version.
The bundled software with this Canon does a wonderful job of descreening halftone images.
Last Christmas I gave my sister an Epson Perfection 2480 which included a partial-page feeder (business cards, checks, snapshots). The descreening on this one isn't as good and I wasn't able to associate the scanned images to Paint Shop Pro properly. However, the software does allow scanning multiple pages in a queue with a minimum of button clicks. Unless your sister is scanning single-page sheet music, she'll probably really benefit from this ability.
I don't know of any consumer-level sheet feeders. By that, I mean a scanner which retails for $100 or so won't have a sheet feeder option or accessory.
Another thing to consider is that scanners with their own power supply will yield higher contrast and brighter colors during the scan.
You should also look at the color of the pad on the underside of the cover. My Canon has a white cover. Yuck!! How Stupid!! Bright light will pass through paper which is being scanned and reflect back to the light sensors. It's far better to have a black pad so a ghost image of the opposite side of the paper is not detected. I have a full-sized hardcover book with a flat black cover which I use to block reflection and hold paper flat. Black construction paper won't work. The scanner's likght will bleach the paper.
A white pad does have some advantages but, in my opinion and experience, a black pad is far more useful.
Epson Scanners (Score:3, Informative)
It depend on your needs, as always (Score:3, Informative)
For your little sister you might want something rugged, depending on how little she is
A USB interface is the simplest, although if you have firewire on your computer that may be faster.
For graphic art work you need to be able to do colour calibration. For OCR, you probably will use grayscale most of the time. You can get some good solid greyscale sheet-fed scanners on ebay pretty cheaply, although make sure they're in your area: I wouldn't trust the shipping.
As others have said, look for TWAIN, and for scanners that work on multiple operating systems.
If you do a lot of scanning you'll need extra hard disk storage and a way to back it up, such as a DVD writer or a tape drive.
Re:Scanner... (Score:2)
--
telnet://sinep.gotdns.com [gotdns.com] -- Remember the old BBS days?
Re:Scanner... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Google (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Google (Score:2)
Re:Google (Score:5, Insightful)
No, because
Re:Google (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Google (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:My favorite scanners is... (Score:2)
I can see why you posted that anonymously. Scanners (1981) [imdb.com] - I wonder what percentage of
Re:Grousing about rejections... (Score:2)
BTW,
-h-
Re:HP's are bad because they're junk. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm so sad that I have to agree with this. I remember how I used to swear by HP. 10 to 15 years ago, they couldn't be beat. Then they completely changed. Everything they put out became disposable and cheap. Their inkjet printers are the strongest example of how they went wrong. I have a friend who's still using his deskjet 500, after nearly 15 years. But in the mid-90's, they started selling not printers, but disposable ink-cartridge caddies. Even the cartridges were junk. You couldn't print 1/4 of the pages advertised before they gummed up so bad they were useless. I haven't bought an HP product in years.
Another reason they aren't worth a crap is their shitty driver support. You buy an HP workstation-class machine from the late 90's early 00's, and you get no support for win98, because it's a home O/S. They only have 2K drivers. Or you buy a 'home/home office' variety from that period, and there's no Win 2K drivers. This extended to their 'internet keyboards' too, which was the last HP item I ever bought.
Then they bought up Compaq, and even their server line now has issues. Ever tried to use their mounting rails? I never thought, back in the 90's that I'd pick a Dell server over HP/Compaq and be able to make the decision merely on the basis of their racks and rails!
Re:HP's are bad because they're junk. (Score:2)
As an aside, I recently bought a consumer PC package from Wal-Mart. I picked up an HP system. Got it home and found it had no S-Video output that I wanted for home movie work. No problem, I shouldn't have expected it. It has PCI-Express graphics, so I consider buying a PCI-Express card that has S-Video. Open the case, there's no PCI-Express slot!!! There's solder pads for the slot on the motherboard, but they never put in the slot. I guess HP will screw the consum
HP alignment problems (Score:2)