[lug] Film scanners under Linux

[Timothy C. Klein]

* Steve T. (maxl at squeep.com) wrote:
> 
>   Recently I've been thinking about purchasing a film scanner, and
> have been wondering about what kind of support there is for them under
> Linux; a quick runthrough of supported USB devices shows that the Canon
> line is probably supported, but the Nikon line seems to be grossly out
> of luck.  A quick check also revealed that there doesn't seem to be
> any specially tailored film scanner software anywhere; I'm wondering if
> somebody out there who knows about the state of film scanner support
> could enlighten me as to what my options are, if any.
> 

I would second the Vuescan comment.  It is a good program, and it
supports *all* of the scanners' native features.  It is not free
software, but the liscensing is very reasonable.  It supports all of the
Nikons, which seem to be the very best (but most expensive).  It also
supports most (all?) of the Canons.

I would use Vuescan, but I am stuck with one of the few major scanners
that it does not support:  the HP Photosmart S20.  I wouldn't bother with
any of the open-source drivers, though.  These are generally very
expensive scanners, and all of the free drivers seem to leave some very
important features unimplemented.  Probably because of proprietary
interfaces that scanner companies won't reaveal.

One last point:  there are supposedly gains to be had by editing 48 bit
color files that most of the scanners now produce.  There does not seem
to be any software under Linux that can do this.  There is something
called Picture Window 3.1, which runs and installs under Wine (at least
for me), even without a native windows partition on the machine.  Again,
though, it is not free software.

http://www.dl-c.com

Tim
--
==============================================
== Timothy Klein || teece at silverklein.net   ==
== ---------------------------------------- ==
== "Hello, World" 17 Errors, 31 Warnings... ==
==============================================