[sane-devel] Help with deciding which frontend to use please

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

Jon Chambers <jon at jon.demon.co.uk> writes:

> Hi,
>
> At the risk of muddying the waters still further you have another couple of 
> options:
>
> 1. Kooka is a KDE SANE app that some people like a lot.
> 2. Additionally there is an xsane GIMP plugin.

Note that iscan can also be used from the GIMP to acquire images.

Options, options ... there's just too many ;-)

> If you intend to process your images straight after scanning then the latter 
> might be the way to go.

I'd have to agree with Jon.  Also, it seems that you may need to do
quite invovled "restoration" of the images.  Unfortunately, all the
frontends I know about (not all that many) do not provide the tools
to do that natively.

Finally, I want to point out that vuescan is not free software to
those for who that matters.
# Yes, iscan isn't free software either :-{

> cheers,
> Jon
>
> On Wednesday 08 November 2006 10:23, cl at isbd.net wrote:
>> I now seem to have my Epson V700 working correctly on my Slackware
>> system so I'm left with the decision of which front-end to use as my
>> main user interface to the scanner.
>>
>> I'd prefer to standardise on one program simply because it's a fairly
>> complex area and the fewer different interfaces I have to learn the
>> better.
>>
>> So my choices are:-
>>     vuescan - not using sane but it is well rcommended
>>     xsane
>>     xscanimage
>>     iscan
>>
>> My main use (at least the one where I need to know the interface well)
>> is scanning quite a number of old slides, a mix of 35mm and 4.5 x 4.5.
>> Some of these are quite badly faded and have colour casts so tools to
>> deal with this are required.
>>
>> I've played with all the above programs a little and my reactions so
>> far are:-
>>
>>     iscan and xscanimage seem not to have all the tools I need to
>>     manipulate the faded slides. So, unless I'm missing something, I
>>     think I can ignore these two.
>>
>>     xsane seems to offer a lot of control but doesn't seem to be quite
>>     as clever as vuescan at 'guessing' right to give you a reasonable
>>     start. On the other hand vuescan has a rather unconventional
>>     interface and I found it diffcult to apply the scanning tips from
>>     the http://www.scantips.com/ site which were quite easy with
>>     xsane.
>>
>> Also would I find it easier to use (say) the Gimp for the corrections
>> using the scanner front end purely for getting as much information as
>> possible from the slides?  I'd prefer not to do this as it adds
>> another 'layer' of learning but if it's the right way to go then it's
>> the right way to go.
>>
>> So can anyone offer any comments (particularly any experience of this
>> type of work) on the best way of handling this?

Hope this helps,
-- 
Olaf Meeuwissen                          EPSON AVASYS Corporation, SE1
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