Scanning in Linux

After actually using my all-in-one printer/scanner/fax/copier thing for scanning some photos, I’ve discovered it’s not actually that great as a scanner; Jack of all, master of none, I guess. It has trouble differentiating any dark colour from black, so the resulting scans have an excessive amount of black in them and generally much fewer colours than they should. The device in question is a Brother MFC420-CN, and for most tasks I require, it’s great – just not for producing quality scans of photos. Not sure if there’s some settings on the scanner I can change, but I tried a bunch of stuff in the scanning software to no avail. On that topic, gnomescan will be a much needed improvement over xsane for Linux/GNOME. I tried it out and it mostly worked. šŸ™‚ But the version I was using (0.4.0.4) has since been rewritten so if you want to use it, try out the svn (version 0.5+).

What was I scanning, you ask? Some class photos from elementary school for a friend. See if you can find me in my grade 3 class. šŸ™‚

My grade 3 class photo

6 comments

  1. I managed to find you in 2 scans across the photo.

    Pretty cool.

    You guys get a nice background for your photos. We don’t have that kind of luxury. šŸ™‚

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