[wyntir23]

I'm shopping around to find a replacement scanner for an elderly friend of mine, whose UMAX recently bit the dust pretty spectacularly. She's not much for computers, and probably the worst thing about her last one was the awful UMAX classic-only software that came with it. I've been shopping for a replacement, with an eye for software quality (no scanners I've ever used have had decent software).

The current front-runner is the CanoScan LiDE 60, for its low price and seeming image quality. But this ePinions commentator doesn't like the software.

So, scanner users, what would you recommend for my poor badly-sighted, technophobic friend?

Thanks much.

[red rocket]

Forget about bundled software, try VueScan instead.

That'd be my recommendation.

[budster101]

VueScan is the best I hear as well.

[mousehouse]

I have an EPSON Perfection Photo (some numeric id)... for some reason EPSON is still releasing TWAIN drivers which I liek very much - because I can import directly into Photoshop. My guess is that EPSON provides this TWAIN driverset for other scanners as well. Visually almost identical to the PC driver...

[Macola]

Just ignore the vendor's bundled software. All decent scanners should have TWAIN drivers which will allow you to use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. I've set up a couple of the older canon LiDE models for my clients and they've been pretty happy with them.

[wyntir23]

I would definitely use Photoshop myself. But I'm not sure my friend is quite equipped to deal with Photoshop's interface. I'd like to get as close as possible to: insert picture -> push a button (software or hardware) -> picture is on your desktop.

I'm also not sure TWAIN drivers are sufficient--I remember on my old HP scanner, the TWAIN import in Photoshop just launched PrecisionScan Pro (blech), and gave the image to Photoshop when you quit. Not ideal.

I know Image Capture now supports scanners--how does it compare to VueScan, or other scanning software? I couldn't find any big screenshots or anything like that on Apple's site or in the help, and I don't have a scanner to try it on.

[IceEnclosure]

Umax should die and go to Hell. Most of their older USB models won't work with OS X, and you can't use VueScan with them either.

I'm in the market as well, and I'd probably go for an Epson or Canon. Twain drivers and/or VueScan would be necessary for my purposes. I think VueScan would be good for your older buddy.

[midwinter]

The Canon software does suck, but it doesn't suck horribly badly. The buttons are clearly labeled and everything. I suspect that when people bitch about it, they're bitching about how confusing the install process is for it (it's mind-boggling).

I have an Lide 20 or 30 that I've had for a while. No problems. Good scan quality.

[wyntir23]

^^^^^ You are correct. I want to get an old UMAX clone and put bad RAM in it, just so I can leave it in the corner with the Sad Mac all day.

I've been playing with VueScan (no scanner to try it with, just fiddling with the interface) and it seems fantastic. I think it might even work for my technophobic friend. I'm concerned about too many buttons, but I think if I put together a little how-to doc with screenshots she'd be able to figure it out alright. (She has a grandchild living with her who's fairly sharp, too.)

I think I'm going to recommend that CanoScan LiDE 60, for $75 with free shipping from Amazon, and then investigate the software situation once it gets here. Maybe Image Capture would even work out alright. I'm not sure if she'd be enamored with spending another $50 on software, especially when she'd only likely use three buttons out of the 900 in VueScan

[graffix]

I use VueScan with my Epson Expression 800, with a SCSI->Firewire converter and it works great. It also has 'easy' and 'advanced' interfaces, so your technophobic friend can choose which interface they prefer.

The other beauty about VueScan is it's constantly updated (sometimes to a fault). This past month there was three updates to it.

I bought the lifetime license when I purchased it (the 'Pro' version), and I've never regretted it... It was a lot easier spending $150 to get my 'unsupported' (by Epson) scanner working under OSX than it was to go out and buy a new firewire scanner with equal capabilities.

[Scandalous Ion Cannon]

I have a Canon MP130 and the software is great.

I also found Epson Scanner software to be alright.

[Eug Wanker]

How is the software for the Canon LiDE 60 on Tiger?
And has anyone tried the Windows software for this scanner?

I'd get the scanner for a Windows XP computer at work, but might plug it into my iBook from time to time.

[AC Rempt]

If it's the same software that comes with the 500F, it's just fine. Make sure to get rid of all older scanning software you might have, though. Mine pitched a fit until I did, but now, it works just fine. The only thing I wish I could do is disable the hardware buttons (my cats do a lot of scanning).

[orbital~debris]

I have the CanoScan LiDE 500F and I'd definitely recommend it.

The scanning process is fast and gives good quality results.
You can tweak the settings quite a bit (for example, I've set mine up so that all scans go to a single folder in my Pictures folder, with different names depending on which button was used to scan them e.g.. photo, scan, file etc.)

The buttons on the scanner are really useful, and you can customise what they do.
It does work with Image Capture, but i currently use the bundled software - CanoScan Toolbox along with the OCR software (OmniPage). If I scan a typed document to a PDF file, it is automatically indexed by Spotlight and shows up in a search shortly after scanning.
Scanning multi-page documents to a single PDF file is impressive too, as is being able to use the scanner as a copier (mine's hooked up to a Canon Pixma printer) and to email a scan via Mail with the single press of a button.

Despite all the advanced features, i would say the Canon software remains simple and logical (even though the actual toolbox part ignores Aqua, the plug-in interface is better, and allows for simple and advanced modes of operation).

[osiris]

VueScan all the way. It works with almost every scanner from this and the last century.

[orbital~debris]

But if you don't want to pay extra for scanner software on top of the cost of the scanner itself, the Canon software is not bad at all.

[jasong]

I've also been very happy with the Canon scanning software myself. I just got the Pixma MP500, one of my favorite features is how you can put multiple pictures on the scanner at once and it will crop them automatically.

I used both Image Capture and VueScan with my previous Epson Perfection 636U. As of OS X 10.4, I found Image Capture about the same as VueScan, I don't know that I would spend the money on it at this point.

[Apfhex]

Really Image Capture is very simple. I think it is a good choice in this situation especially since it's free and already comes with OS X. I've tried to use Canon's CanoScan Toolbox and I guess it's alright.... but the interface sucks bad and it doesn't look like it even allows you to preview/crop images? I always use the Photoshop plugin, and find that to be very very good.

[Eug Wanker]

OK, I've just ordered two CanoScan LiDE 35 flatbed scanners, one for my office for my iBook, and one as a quick-and-dirty emergency backup scanner (on Windows XP) for the department.



The posts here saying that the newer Canon software wasn't terrible prompted me to download it and install it. Dunno if it works or not since I don't have a Canon scanner yet, but at least the install process was painless. Good enough for me to pull the trigger considering they were only CAD$60 (US$51) each.

I'm just worried it will stop working when I get an Intel PowerBook or Intel iBook. I hope not. The good news I suppose though is that this scanner is still a current model, so it could mean that Canon might update the drivers in a relatively timely manner in 2006 after the Intel Macs come out.

[wuzup101]

I've had a canon LIDE 30 since they came out... very nice scanner indeed. I've used it for both PC and Mac and the software isn't bad at all IMHO. However, I have photoshop on both of the computers so the pictures are always imported using that now (TWAIN drivers). I do use the scanner a decent amout (probably 25-50 scans a week) while in school... never had a single problem and the unit itself is pretty fast....

[cambolo]

My Lide 30 scanner has functioned using OS 10.3.9 without a problem until recently. Now, it scans as usual but instead of opening the image in Photoshop 7.0 as it did in the past, it now tries to open Classic. I tried selecting Photoshop Elements 2.0 as the plug-in application and the same problem occurs. I haven't used Classic in two years and don't know what triggered this odd new behavior. I can drag the scanned image to Photoshop and it opens with no problems but this takes extra steps that are time consuming. I've tried uninstallling and re-installing all the Canon software and have excluded the OS 9 plugin. Nothing seems to work. At this point, I'm at a loss as to what to do.

[cambolo]

Since posting the reply above I have solved my problem. In the Canoscan Toolbox Scan-1 window where one selects the destination for "Link Scanned Image To", I had selected the Photoshop application rather than the Photoshop document in the MacOS Contents folder.

[Eug Wanker]

OK, I received the LiDE 35 scanner. To clarify.

1) OS X will not see it unless you load the driver. That might seem obvious to many here but for some reason I had interpreted this thread to mean that Image Capture would just work with it natively without the need for any extra driver. That is not the case.

2) The driver install is an easy one. Just one painless installer (without the requirement of a reboot), and then Image Capture works great with it. It also comes with an uninstall function too if you want it.

3) I haven't tried the Canon supplied software with it, so no comment on that.

4) The scanner works fine even though I have an Epson scanner driver also installed. No conflict as far as I can see.

[drvannostrand]

i was wondering which scsi-firewire adapter you use as i have the same scanner and would love to use it with OSX. any info would be helpfull. thanks.

Originally Posted by graffix 

I use VueScan with my Epson Expression 800, with a SCSI->Firewire converter and it works great. It also has 'easy' and 'advanced' interfaces, so your technophobic friend can choose which interface they prefer.

The other beauty about VueScan is it's constantly updated (sometimes to a fault). This past month there was three updates to it.

I bought the lifetime license when I purchased it (the 'Pro' version), and I've never regretted it... It was a lot easier spending $150 to get my 'unsupported' (by Epson) scanner working under OSX than it was to go out and buy a new firewire scanner with equal capabilities.

[graffix]

Howdy,
I used the Ratoc FR1SX SCSI->Firewire converter. It's worked great with every OS update I've thrown at it, and I'm currently using it under Tiger 10.4.8 without issue.

[kick52]

Use SANE - its open source scanning software that fits into image capture, and it supports loads of scanners.

[all2ofme]

Vuescan's worth every penny. I've not looked back since I got it to use instead of Nikon's software.

[graffix]

SANE is good software, but doesn't hold a candle to VueScan.