[K12OSN] USB scanner on client

[ssanders at coin.org]

I had an email exchange with someone on the list that took place mostly
offlist. He was doing this successfully. I had a drive crash, and lost
the discussion. Based on his recommendations and googling, I decided on
an Epson Photo 2480 scanner. It required the firmware file (on the CD,
and I found it online). I got busy with other things, and did not
continue that project.

I did hook the scanner up recently on the 4.4.1 server, and it works
quite nicely. Gimp can acquire an image directly. I had to monkey around
with perms a little. The command 'scanimage -L' was a lifesaver in
getting Xsane initially configured. It has a slide/negative adapter and
a lighted lid. It's not quite in the category of real film scanners, but
I can scan a 35mm slide at 2400 DPI, and it prints nicely at 8 x 10.
Once my mother learned of this, however, she presented me with about 10
pounds of old slides. Now I have a HUGE project in the queue. Many of
these are over 50 years old, so I have been learning restoration/repair
techniques as well. Good old Gimp is great for this. While not quite as
good as setting them by hand, Auto Levels is your friend.

Once I was faced with hundreds and hundreds of slides/scans, I started
looking for ways to ease this task. Remember, the concept of automation
is near and dear to the lazy man (even if much more effort is expended
in finding or developing the automated solution).

I started reading up on command line ImageMagick stuff, and batching
Gimp, when I found a very nice plugin from a guy in Australia. I had to
add the gimp-devel packages, and it easily compiles into a plugin so you
can use the Gimp GUI (and optionally see the changes being made).

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~hodsond/dbp.html


On Tue, 2006-01-17 at 22:57 -0600, ssanders at coin.org wrote:
> I had an email exchange with someone on the list that took place
> mostly
> offlist. He was doing this successfully. I had a drive crash, and lost
> the discussion. Based on his recommendations and googling, I decided
> on
> an Epson Photo 2480 scanner. It required the firmware file (on the CD,
> and I found it online). I got busy with other things, and did not
> continue that project.
> 
> I did hook the scanner up recently on the 4.4.1 server, and it works
> quite nicely. Gimp can acquire an image directly. I had to monkey
> around
> with perms a little. The command 'scanimage -L' was a lifesaver in
> getting Xsane initially configured. It has a slide/negative adapter
> and
> a lighted lid. It's not quite in the category of real film scanners,
> but
> I can scan a 35mm slide at 2400 DPI, and it prints nicely at 8 x 10.
> Once my mother learned of this, however, she presented me with about
> 10
> pounds of old slides. Now I have a HUGE project in the queue. Many of
> these are over 50 years old, so I have been learning
> restoration/repair
> techniques as well. Good old Gimp is great for this. While not quite
> as
> good as setting them by hand, Auto Levels is your friend.
> 
> Once I was faced with hundreds and hundreds of slides/scans, I started
> looking for ways to ease this task. Remember, the concept of
> automation
> is near and dear to the lazy man (even if much more effort is expended
> in finding or developing the automated solution).
> 
> I started reading up on command line ImageMagick stuff, and batching
> Gimp, when I found a very nice plugin from a guy in Australia. I had
> to
> add the gimp-devel packages, and it easily compiles into a plugin so
> you
> can use the Gimp GUI (and optionally see the changes being made).
> 
> http://members.ozemail.com.au/~hodsond/dbp.html
>