Slowly I wake...
Apr. 19th, 2008 12:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swestrupFinally dragged myself out of bed. I was up way past my bedtime last night doing stuff for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
taxlady. I am looking forward to going to messiahdivine's party tonight, but first I have more work to do for the wife. At least now I know what NOT to do to improve efficiency when scanning documents.
You see, I made the mistake of going and installing the specific HP software for the HP scanner I am using, rather than use Windows generic scanner support software. The generic software is pretty lame. It has no memory, so to scan a page I have to go into a graphics program and for each page I have to click on 'acquire' in the file menu, reselect 'greyscale' and hit scan. Once its scanned at least Irfan (the particular program I'm using) remembers where the last image was saved and makes it easy to save the current one to the same place, giving it any name I want, or to append it to an already existing .tif file. Its kinda clunky (especially considering that the 'append' option is in a completely different menu than the 'save' option...) but it works.
Still, this scanner (an HP Scanjet G3010) has a 'scan' button on it which is supposed to be able to invoke a pre-set scan routine, so I had visions of putting a page in the scanner, hitting the button and have a requestior pop up asking what name to save under. That, it turns out, is almost how it happens.
The trouble is that, rather than the generic driver which seems to have been slapped together to do the job with no thought to usability, the HP software has been carefully polished so as to make their set of use-cases as painless as possible, but with the consequence of making all OTHER use cases (of which mine is one) damn near impossible.
First of all, it never remembers the last place you saved something. So, when you switch directories where you are saving to, you have to go back into the button configuration program and change that default. Second, it ALWAYS appends a sequence number to the end of the file name you provide, even when you want to provide individual names to the saved files. Thus you're forced to go and rename every file it creates so as to remove the 0001 its tacked on the end of the file names.
Then there is the problem of previews. The program lets you prescan (naturally) but thats just as slow as a regular scan and scanning speed is the major bottleneck in the process, so there's no point. Instead I'd rather just have the image dumped into a viewer and crop if it overscanned the document. Thats fast. Now, there's a wide range of set destinations I can have the button-invoked scan send the image to. I can drop it into a Thunderbird email, or into the HP viewer program, or into one of two provided HP image manipulators, or save it straight to file, plus there's a bunch of other options (like immediate print or immediate fax).
That all sounds good, but in practice it sucks. All of the HP image software (the viewer and the two image programs -- which are all essentially the same program with different levels of menu options) sucks badly. They don't want to talk about actual files in directories but about abstract catalogs of images you have. My needs require me to store the files in particular directories ON A DIFFERENT MACHINE ON MY NETWORK. The viewer doesn't even have a 'save this file' option, so its out. The HP image editors will show me a list of my drives and directories, but have no concept of network paths and so I can't use that. Plus there is no way to manually enter a path. You have to click on a provided directory view. If where you want to save to isn't in that view, then you're S.O.L.
Even all that wouldn't be so bad if there was an option on the destinations list to send the file to a useful location, like an arbitrary image program like Irfan. But there isn't. There's no way to add options to the drop down list.
So, it seems that if what you are doing is scanning hundreds of photographs to your local computer and have no idea what to call them or where to store them, or how to organize them, then the HP software will make that a breeze. But if you actually KNOW what you are doing. In fact, if you have a SINGLE CLUE, as to how you want to do things, you will rapidly find yourself screaming at the software as it blithely ignores your desires as to how you want to be organized, and instead does whatever the hell it thinks you need.
Now, I'm a rather calm person and I almost never get upset at software, but yesterday I found myself cursing HP and its entire programming department out loud as I attempt to force its labour-saving features into some pattern that would actually allow me to save labour. After two hours of struggle and trying every combination of options I could think of, in the end I gave up and had to go back to the generic clunky interface which was horrible but usable, rather than use HP's elegantly designed and polished code that was completely and utterly impossible to use.
Now I have to wonder if there isn't some open source piece of windows software that could be used as a generic scanning/printing center and that would work half decently. I don't suppose anyone has ever ported SANE to windows?
taxlady. I am looking forward to going to messiahdivine's party tonight, but first I have more work to do for the wife. At least now I know what NOT to do to improve efficiency when scanning documents.You see, I made the mistake of going and installing the specific HP software for the HP scanner I am using, rather than use Windows generic scanner support software. The generic software is pretty lame. It has no memory, so to scan a page I have to go into a graphics program and for each page I have to click on 'acquire' in the file menu, reselect 'greyscale' and hit scan. Once its scanned at least Irfan (the particular program I'm using) remembers where the last image was saved and makes it easy to save the current one to the same place, giving it any name I want, or to append it to an already existing .tif file. Its kinda clunky (especially considering that the 'append' option is in a completely different menu than the 'save' option...) but it works.
Still, this scanner (an HP Scanjet G3010) has a 'scan' button on it which is supposed to be able to invoke a pre-set scan routine, so I had visions of putting a page in the scanner, hitting the button and have a requestior pop up asking what name to save under. That, it turns out, is almost how it happens.
The trouble is that, rather than the generic driver which seems to have been slapped together to do the job with no thought to usability, the HP software has been carefully polished so as to make their set of use-cases as painless as possible, but with the consequence of making all OTHER use cases (of which mine is one) damn near impossible.
First of all, it never remembers the last place you saved something. So, when you switch directories where you are saving to, you have to go back into the button configuration program and change that default. Second, it ALWAYS appends a sequence number to the end of the file name you provide, even when you want to provide individual names to the saved files. Thus you're forced to go and rename every file it creates so as to remove the 0001 its tacked on the end of the file names.
Then there is the problem of previews. The program lets you prescan (naturally) but thats just as slow as a regular scan and scanning speed is the major bottleneck in the process, so there's no point. Instead I'd rather just have the image dumped into a viewer and crop if it overscanned the document. Thats fast. Now, there's a wide range of set destinations I can have the button-invoked scan send the image to. I can drop it into a Thunderbird email, or into the HP viewer program, or into one of two provided HP image manipulators, or save it straight to file, plus there's a bunch of other options (like immediate print or immediate fax).
That all sounds good, but in practice it sucks. All of the HP image software (the viewer and the two image programs -- which are all essentially the same program with different levels of menu options) sucks badly. They don't want to talk about actual files in directories but about abstract catalogs of images you have. My needs require me to store the files in particular directories ON A DIFFERENT MACHINE ON MY NETWORK. The viewer doesn't even have a 'save this file' option, so its out. The HP image editors will show me a list of my drives and directories, but have no concept of network paths and so I can't use that. Plus there is no way to manually enter a path. You have to click on a provided directory view. If where you want to save to isn't in that view, then you're S.O.L.
Even all that wouldn't be so bad if there was an option on the destinations list to send the file to a useful location, like an arbitrary image program like Irfan. But there isn't. There's no way to add options to the drop down list.
So, it seems that if what you are doing is scanning hundreds of photographs to your local computer and have no idea what to call them or where to store them, or how to organize them, then the HP software will make that a breeze. But if you actually KNOW what you are doing. In fact, if you have a SINGLE CLUE, as to how you want to do things, you will rapidly find yourself screaming at the software as it blithely ignores your desires as to how you want to be organized, and instead does whatever the hell it thinks you need.
Now, I'm a rather calm person and I almost never get upset at software, but yesterday I found myself cursing HP and its entire programming department out loud as I attempt to force its labour-saving features into some pattern that would actually allow me to save labour. After two hours of struggle and trying every combination of options I could think of, in the end I gave up and had to go back to the generic clunky interface which was horrible but usable, rather than use HP's elegantly designed and polished code that was completely and utterly impossible to use.
Now I have to wonder if there isn't some open source piece of windows software that could be used as a generic scanning/printing center and that would work half decently. I don't suppose anyone has ever ported SANE to windows?
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-19 05:08 pm (UTC)I have it set up so IrfanView invokes the HP software when I hit shift-control-a (acquire). Is there a way to change what it invokes? I didn't realize I could tell it greyscale from Irfan before scanning.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-19 05:11 pm (UTC)I'm now researching other generic twain scanner drivers for HP to see if I can find one that works better...
no subject
Date: 2008-04-19 06:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-19 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-19 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-25 06:30 pm (UTC)Having (finally!) actually found a 'port' I discover that no one has actually documented the port. So, I can't figure out how to install it or get it to run. All the docs (including troubleshooting) are all inappropriate for windows.
All attempts at using it fail to find the scanner, despite it being listed as supported for SANE. So, until an actual competent port exists, I'm back to looking for a windows-centric solution.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-25 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-19 07:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-21 02:25 pm (UTC)Check out "Vuescan" for Mac OS X. I used it for many years with my old UMAX scanner. I had to find something when I went from OS 9 to OS X and UMAX in its infinite lack of wisdom took way too long to write something for the new OS.
Sidenote:
---------
I now use a Canon LiDE 70 with the "Canoscan ToolBox" software. It does exactly what it should do, giving me access to real directories and files. I've managed to back up several paper only financial statements in that fashion, using the "scan to PDF" option.
What happens when iPhoto gets a hold of a photographic image is quite another thing, though.