[sane-devel] Sane + iscan + iee1394 + quality of colors

[Alesh Slovak]

Hi Jean-Michel,

I am a developer on iscan, I'll try to answer some of your questions.

Jean-Michel Pouré wrote:
> 1) Sane + iscan
> 
> If I buy an Epson Perfection v350 or Epson Perfection v500, I guess I
> have to use iscan. Is plugging sane into iscan a reliable solution?
iscan already uses SANE. The iscan packages contain a driver (SANE 
backend) and a GUI (SANE frontend). You do not have to use the iscan 
GUI, you can continue to use XSane with the driver provided by the iscan 
package.

> Until now, I have only been using Sane native products. 
> Are there known incompatibilities using sane with iscan?
Again, iscan uses SANE. It is just not included in SANE by default.
Because of this, there could be some problems if you are using a little 
used distribution. We generally try to support Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, 
OpenSUSE and Mandriva. If you are not using one of these distributions, 
your mileage may vary.

The problem with the models you suggest is that they require a 
proprietary plugin (i.e. no source code is available), which some people 
find unacceptable. This is also the reason why the epson driver included 
with SANE (epson2 backend) does not support these models.

We provide 32-bit and 64-bit rpm and debian binary packages for 
Intel/AMD processors. If you are using anything else, PowerPC, ARM, etc. 
you won't be able to use these scanners unfortunately.

> 2) ieee1394
> The other possibility would be to buy a Perfection V700, which has USB +
> ieee1394 and is fully supported by sane. 
This model might be a better idea, it does not require a proprietary 
plugin to function, thus it would work with or without iscan.

> Just two questions: 
> + Is scanning 35mm films faster using ieee1394
> + Does sane support the old or the new firewire stack or both? The
> target system is a Debian SID, which only supports the new firewire
> stack.
> + Is Sane ieee1394 more stable than USB scanning? I experienced some
> warming problems with USB. Previously I had an SCSI scanner and it never
> hanged during warm-up.
I can't speak as to the level of support for ieee1394 in the epson 
drivers provided by SANE, but for iscan it is untested. We basically 
only support USB.

> 3) Quality of colors
> 
> I am planning 2400 dpi scans. More generaly, is there a wide difference
> between the color grades of a low budget Epson v350 and a middle range
> Epson v700? Is it worth spending more money for better colors. I did
> some testing with my Epson 1660 Photo and the colors look okay after
> correction. Can it bring better colors to spend more money?
I am afraid I cannot answer this question. I am no expert on colour.

I hope I was able to clear some things up for you.

Regards,
Alesh