macosxhints.com scanner tips

Use a Windows PC Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner on the Mac

Tue, 19 May 2009 07:30:00 -0700

Fujitsu does not list Mac OS X drivers for the ScanSnap S510 on their English language website (maybe because they have a Mac version of the ScanSnap S510, the ScanSnap S510M). They do, however, list the OS X drivers for the ScanSnap S510 on the Japanese language site, but as you may expect, the program is also in Japanese. The directions that follow are to get the ScanSnap S510 working under Mac OS X, in English.

Download the ScanSnap Manager software for the S510M (ScanSnap_V22L11.dmg). After downloading, install the software.
Use Finder to locate the ScanSnap Manager.app file. Control click on it and choose Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu. Then open the Contents » Resources folder.
Copy the English.lproj folder to the desktop.
Open the Applications folder and drag the ScanSnap folder to the trash, then empty the trash.
Now that we h...

10.5: Possibly use the Microtek S400 in 10.5

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:30:03 -0700

I have successfully gotten my "unsupported" Microtek S400 scanner to work under Leopard. First I copied the scanner driver from Tiger (in the /Library/Application Support folder), and installed it into the same folder in Leopard. Next, I installed the Scan Maker software. Maybe it's the 10.5.4 update that made it work; maybe my manual copy made it work, but either way, it's now working fine for me in 10.5.

Use an unsupported Epson scanner on an Intel Mac

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 07:30:00 -0800

This hint describes how to modify the EPSON Scanner file to support older Epson scanners. Unfortunately, the process did not work for us with an Epson Stylus 2500 on an intel iMac running OS X 10.4.11.

The solution we found was to replace the Universal version of EPSON Scanner.app on the iMac (version 3.1.1) with the PowerPC version (version 3.1.0) from a G4 mac running OS X 10.4.11. We then modified the plist files as described in the original hint, and were able to scan with the Stylus 2500 using Image Capture.

[robg adds: Note that this change will have the scanner running in Rosetta mode on the Intel-powered machine. As with any change to a system file, I would recommend keeping a backup of the original, and you're on your own if this causes problems with your machine.]

Force HP scanners to automatically clear temporary files

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 07:30:03 -0700

I have an HP All-in-one printer/scanner, but I assume this will be useful for other HP scanner models as well. I was mighty annoyed by the fact that the scanner leaves a temp file every time you use it. The temp file can be found in a subfolder of your Home folder (in: ~/Documents » All-in-One Data Folder » Archive, to be precise). I experimented with shell scripting to automatically clean out that folder periodically, but with less than satisfying results.

Then the following solution suddenly occurred to me: I deleted the folder Archive, and replaced it with a symbolic link to the system temp folder. For the non Terminal-savvy, this is the procedure in Terminal:

cd /Users/your_username/Documents/All-in-One Data Folder
ln -s /tmp Archive

Make sure to name the link exactly the same as the original folder where the temp files are saved (the the last word on the above line will be the name of the link). Now the scanner saves its temp files in /tmp, ...

Scan many pages (almost) directly into a combined PDF

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 07:30:07 -0700

I have to print, sign, scan, and email a lot of documents, and have been seeking out an easy way to do it for a while. It's been particularly aggravating for multi-page documents, because Image Capture saves each scan as an individual file. There are a couple of tools that can scan directly to PDF, but they cost about $60 or more, and that's a lot for a simple function like this, in my opinion. Today I hit upon an extremely easy way of scanning directly to PDF format that uses freeware tools:

Get your scanner all set up, using whatever drivers you need. (This can sometimes be a bear on OSX. If your scanner manufacturer doesn't provide a driver, check out the SANE project; they may have something for you).
Download and install CombinePDF, a really fantastic little tool that I've found handy on many occasions.
Connect your scanner to your...

Make networked scanners available to other Macs

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:30:05 -0700

If, like me, you have a scanner as part of a networked multi-function device, you may find that the Mac support for scanning over the network is poor or even non-existent.

If you share a scanner using the Open Source SANE project, however, you can use Mattias Ellert's TWAIN/SANE interface to make it available to your Mac applications.

I used a Linux machine to share the scanner using SANE, allowing Macs on my network to use the scanner by connecting to the Linux box. Image Capture, Photoshop and Acrobat work fine with it. More information on my setup can be found here. I just happened to have a Linux machine available, but you can do a similar thing in an all-Mac environment.

Use an unsupported Epson scanner with Image Capture

Wed, 26 Jul 2006 07:30:06 -0700

This hint basically explain how to make Image Capture to recognize an old Epson USB scanner (or all-in-one device) for which there are no Mac OS X drivers. It requires no additional software, and should works natively on Intel Macs.

I have an old Epson Stylus Scan 2500, which is still a perfect solution for my small office. I can make copies (even in color), print at fair quality and speed, and scan documents. And finally, it's a robust device, at least compared to the actual Epson printers.

Unfortunately, Epson decided to classify this all in one device as "unsupported by Mac OS X," and therefore never released updated drivers. Starting from Mac OS X Jaguar, with the help of CUPS and gimp-print, I can use this device as a printer (the printer part is essentially an Epson Stylus Color 740). But what about the scanner? A viable solution would be to use VueScan, which is a very good software, but I would like to have something more integrated with Mac OS X a...