Managing unwanted Mac startup apps: ScanSnap's AOUMonitor and Citrix Receiver

I replaced my despised ScanSnap S1300 with (sigh) another Fujitsu - the ScanSnap ix500. So far I like the ix500 almost as much as I disliked its predecessor. I bought it as a document scanner, but I'm using it to process several thousand prints currently stuck in a bin. The image quality is nowhere near as good as my Epson V700 [1], but it's a lot better than nothing. [2]

The next day though, my 2009 iMac (Mountain Lion)'s mouse pointer was frozen after screensaver clearance. The machine didn't respond to keyboard either; I hard to power cycle. This happened a few more times, though sometimes the keyboard worked.  I found if I unplugged the peripherals, including my Mini DisplayPort external monitor, I could get things working.

In my recent experience this kind of problem is most often hardware related -- perhaps a problem with my USB bus (7-8 devices on one old hub!) or Firewire bus. I do look for software issues though, and I realized I had two new apps running in my Menu Bar. One was called AOUMonitor and the other was Citrix Receiver.

Yikes! It's true that modern Mac issues are more often hardware than software, but those are two bad actors. AOUMonitor is Fujitsu's "ScanSnap Online Update" -- and Fujitsu is known for buggy Mac software. I only run ScanSnap Manager when I need it. Citrix is even worse -- my wife has to use it but it shouldn't be running in my account.

I needed both of them out.

AOUMonitor was easy. From my Admin account I found ScanSnap Online Update Settings.app and turned off auto-update. then I went to the Admin startup items and disabled AOUMonitor. I saw that ScanSnap Manager was also running for all users on startup, so I deleted that as well. I'll run it when I need it.

I figure AOUMonitor crept in when I uninstalled my old ScanSnap software and installed the new stuff, then updated it. I can't explain how Citrix Receiver showed up; until now I'd only seen it in my wife's account. Maybe some auto-update? Maybe I just never noticed it before. Disturbing!

Of course Citrix Receiver is an evil hack, so you don't find it Apple's User Startup Items list. I followed MacWorld's Take control of startup and login items (See also: Troubleshooting Startup and Login Items) and found several Citrix items in ~\Library\Library\LaunchAgents. I moved them to Emily's personal Library\LaunchAgents folder so they'd only run in her account.

Now we'll see if my mouse problems improve. Next thing is reducing the stress on the USB hub - and changing my screensaver away from Aperture slideshows.

- fn -

[1] Scanner tech isn't changing much -- just faster. So good photo scanners last a long time, but of course prints are going away -- so the useful lifetime of photo scanners is limited.

[2] Not the point of this post, but I just dump 30 or so photos in the feeder and scan to iPhoto at 300 dpi, color, minimal compression.  The ix500 does a batch in about 15 seconds. Then I flip over to Aperture and organize 'em. The photos go into appropriate "Events" after I fix version names and set an approximate date, but I also create albums that match the photos to a code number (S1 ... Sn) on the photo envelopes. Then when I'm done it's easy to find prints or negatives that I want to scan property. I didn't return to high quality cameras until I went digital, so for most of these prints the quick scan is good enough.

Image Capture hangs at "Scanning", process pegs at 100% - ghost iPhone and dust removal

I've used my Epson V700 with Image Capture for years. Until today it's never had a problem.

Today it has a problem!

My scans are taking a very, very long time to complete. They seem to hang after the scan is completed, but after about five minutes they complete. It's as though something is timing out. In Activity Monitor the Epson Scanner Process is pegged at 100% CPU.

I switched to another account and the scan completed in seconds. So it's not hardware. It's something about my primary account.

A restart didn't fix it and deleting Image Capture preferences didn't help.

The problem started after several scans, so it's not related to a software install. The /private/tmp folder that Image Capture uses to cache its work seems fine.

Next up I'll try Onyx and clear out all my caches.

It's a weird one.

Update: I've identified one difference. On my primary account Image Capture thinks an iPhone is attached, even though it isn't. I found one other report of this in Snow Leopard and another here.

Update 2: I got rid of the "ghost" iPhone camera by removing all USB peripherals and restarting. That didn't help however. Scanning in my primary account is still far slower than scanning in my admin account. I even tried repairing permissions; as usual that made no difference. I started an Apple Discussion thread on this.

Update 6/9/2012: There were two issues. Removing the "ghost" iPhone did make a difference. The rest of the difference was dust removal. I was used to having it turned off. Turning it on really extends scan duration. Perhaps it's on by default and removing preferences enabled it?

My ScanSnap S1300 document scanner review

I bought this scanner because Joe Kissell loved it and Kissell is a good geek. By my standards it was a bit of a shot in the dark, but I'm happy. Even so, I only gave it 3 stars in my Amazon review -- the software is worse than Kissell described (he uses DevonThink Pro Office, $150, so he didn't get the full software experience).

Read the Kissell review, then my own Amazon review. I'll probably do some updating here later, but I wanted to get this out (emphases added) ...

Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 Instant PDF Sheet-Fed Mobile Scanner (PA03603-B005)

I've been looking for this scanner for 15 years. It's good enough. It could be better, but it's good enough. If it lasts for two years I'll happily buy it again at the same price.

The hardware is essentially perfect. It's a bit annoying that you need two USB cables if you want to avoid the generic (mediocre) power brick, but blame that on USB. We should all be using either old style firewire or never coming USB 3, but we're stuck with USB 2. It scans both sides of paper at once. Yes, DUPLEX.

Although it's primarily a document scanner, I've used it scan color prints. The results were not professional quality, but they were darned good and fast.

The 300 page user guide documentation is excellent.

The software is mediocre. Some of the bundled OS X software is so old it's non-native on Intel machines, fortunately you can omit that install. Unlike the higher end machines you don't get Adobe's superb PDF/OCR combination (yes, once Adobe was competent), you get a much less efficient product called ABBY FineReader. Even so, it does produce PDF images with searchable OCRd text indices.

Most importantly, OS X Spotlight WILL index the text associated with these PDF image files.

The mediocrity extends to the ScanSnap Manager UI and workflow. Clearly this was a low bid contract. Don't expect much in the way of upgrades or future products. The scans, however, can be sent to products like DevonThink Pro ($150) for processing.

The scanner uses proprietary drives. This is the biggest concern. If they're not upgraded we can be sure that within 3 years they won't work on OS X. Fujitsu, notoriously, does not provide new versions of ScanSnap Manager without a hardware purchase.

There are other problems with the software, but so far it hasn't been unstable.

In summary, 2 star software, 5 star hardware, gives a 3 star review. Surprisingly, I still love the product. If Apple were ever to produce a scanner, it would be a lot like this, though with a better power adapter and infinitely better software.

If you prefer 200K OCRd B&W documents to 8MB grayscale/color you need to set and use Profiles. The software isn't smart enough to make that choice for you.

It occupies a corner of my desk where papers used to pile up. It uses less room than the papers, which now live in the recycling.

Update 9/14/10: various notes I really don't have time to assemble into a coherent whole, but will be of interest if you read this far....

• There's a Carrying case offer
• Scan Snap Manager includes an online update option from the Help menu
• Uses a standard OS X Apple installer and documentation has clear uninstall directions
• 1.2GB installation - watch carefully for the custom install option and disable Cardiris (143MB, needs Rosetta, not useful). ABBY is 526MB, ScanSnap Manager is 2576MB
• Fujitsu sells consumables - cleaning kit, pad assembly (10,000 sheet or 1 year), Pick Roller 100,000 sheets or 1 year. Fujitsu is used to selling to the high end!
• 1 year warrantte, no active exchange
• Options like 1 page vs. multi-page are not obvious.
• You can change options for a single scan without clicking Aplly (which is actually save) but the progress UI shows the saved settings, not the current modified settins
• Profile Management has glitches with OS X Spaces and multiple monitors

Update 9/28/10: OS X black screened on me. First time in a very long time. SSM has to be #1 suspect.

Update 7/8/11: I can't recall what that 9/28/10 crash was, but it wasn't due to ScanSnap. Posting now because a comment on my Amazon review tells us Fujitsu has updated the S1300 drivers for Lion. Indeed, they seem to have updated all their current drivers. This was one of my concerns with the ScanSnap and I'm very pleased to see them do this. I'm not on Lion yet, so I'll hold off updating. I will download a copy however.

Update 4/14/2013: Today, after one mangled page too many, I decided this scanner was a bad idea. The sheet feeder simply isn't good enough.

Project Shredder begins

Gordon's Rules of Acquisition remind me that the purchase price is often the smallest cost of acquisition. So I like to digest each piece of gear before I bring down new prey.

The last meals have gone relatively well. My mother's iPad and my own iPhone 4 were big bites, but they went faster than expected. The Brother 2140 and updated Airport Express were bought for trouble-free implementation and they worked as expected. Migrating my old 3G to my son was more complicated thanks to AT&T's incomprehensible and undocumented contract rules, but it too has passed.

Since Canon refuses to make the dSLR I want [1], I'm delaying replacement of my aging DigitalRebel. So my path is clear for something more challenging.

Hence Project Shredder.

I am bad at filing. I've always been bad, but it's getting worse. Once the easy stuff is tossed, the hard stuff builds up in bins and boxes. I need a better approach [2].

I have some past experience with document and image scanning including developing document management technologies, but I've never felt that the technology was really ready for my home use. Over the past few years, however, OCR and full text indexing have matured into my zone of acceptably pain-free technology. Adobe's 1996-vintage PDF image/text format has become widely accepted [3]; it's the format I've wanted for fifteen years. The Fujitsu ScanSnap line has been stable and respected for at least ten years, and their space-saving S1300 has gotten a great review from a source I trust.

So it's time to make a stab at this. I'll have more to say in future posts about the S1300 when it arrives, and how the entire process plays out at our home [4]. Look for the "document management" tag for related posts.

-- footnotes --
[1] Stop the 3$!#$% megapixels Canon. Give us ISO.
[2] Adobe, like Microsoft, wasn't always a zombie company.
[3] Though Fujitsu's software distribution strategy may lead me to a Torrent client!
[4] I'll keep the way I file receipts and manuals. Receipts get tossed into a bin in chronological order. Manuals get placed in bookcase boxes in alphabetic order with the date of acquisition written on the front page. I weed receipts by tossing the bottom of the bin, the manuals as I add new ones. This process is so efficient I don't see much room for improvement.

Image Capture 10.6 is one heck of a scanning app

Apple doesn't say much about the newly enhanced scanning feature built into 10.6 ...

Apple - Mac OS X - What Is Mac OS X - All Applications and Utilities

... Image Capture transfers images between your digital camera or scanner and your Mac for use in iPhoto and other applications....

There's nothing there to suggest this ...

Shoot. It's not like Apple is known for modesty. Why not boast a bit?

Good old Image Capture, which always had more abilities than most realized, is now a very sweet scanning app in 10.6. Apple has silently removed one of the OS X's bigger weaknesses -- crummy scanner support. Yeah, that was due to hardware vendors outsourcing device drivers to the lowest bidder, but users felt the pain all the same.

For years I've made do with Epson's crummy and buggy product, and I was worried how my sweet Epson V700 would do with Snow Leopard.

It took about 5 minutes to answer that question. I plugged a bright orange $10 LaCie 800-400 flat firewire cable into the i5 and the V700, then fired up Image Capture and clicked "Show Details". Everything is there, and the results are fine. (I scan to high res TIFF then post-process to archival JPEG in Aperture, or, as of today, in Lightroom beta 3.)

I didn't install anything. No apps, no drivers.

The new scanning features include automatic detection of separate items so you can scan multiple items at once. The downside is that not all scanners are supported; HP scanners are particularly problematic. Of course all HP consumer products are problematic ...

See also:

• Gordon's Tech: Epson vs. Canon scanners: who has better OS X support (how I picked the V700 - 2007)
• Gordon's Tech: Obnoxious old Epson Scan bug: EPSON Scan cannot be started
• Gordon's Tech: Image Capture for Scanning: the 2nd most underestimated OS X application (2007)
• Gordon's Tech: VueScan vs. Nikon Scan on OS X
• Gordon's Tech: Scantips advice on VueScan
• Gordon's Tech: Digital Imaging Software Review: Vuescan 8.1
• Gordon's Tech: Scanner support remains problematic in Tiger: Epson support

Update 12/27/09: It even automatically found my 4yo networked Brother MFC-7820N - with no drivers installed! It took a long time to do the initial scan - spent about 5 minutes spinning. I was about to kill the process when it completed. Subsequent scans start fairly promptly. Page processing seems slow - and I'm using an i5! The B&W 200 dpi scan PDF results are excellent though, 4 pages at 745KB with very fine post-processing. I suspect there will be glitches though, I've seen this machine have trouble switching between acting as a scanner and acting as a printer.

--

My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

Brother MFC machine scan to USB features

I've long wanted a home scanner that would scan to local or network storage without intervention. In the 1990s I thought about ways to add such a facility to an existing scanner, but it didn't make business case. About 3-4 years ago scan PDF to network shares appeared in our office machines and my Brother MFC -7820N, and now our office scanners store PDF scans on an internal drive.

It's a fantastic feature, but the 7820N implementation is quirky. It doesn't work well with multi-user machines and it requires an oddball embedded server run on the recipient machine.

Today I discovered that the Brother MFC-9440CN will scan to a local USB store. Based on the Scan to USB documentation this is now available for 3 networked multi-function machines

DCP-9045CDN
MFC-9440CN
MFC-9840CDW

The MFC-9440CN was first introduced in 2007 (and is probably about to be replaced, so it's on sale now) and I'm writing about this now. Since this is a feature I'm extremely interested in I think there's a bit of a marketing failure here.

Brother's web site has some additional documentation ...

Scan | Brother

1. Scan to USB
   Brother’s Scan to USB enables you to scan documents direct to a USB memory device without the need to start up your PC. This means you can make digitised copies of documents immediately, including handwritten meeting notes, certificates, business cards, and drawings so you can be sure everything has been captured on the USB memory drive for later use.
2. Scan to file
   Save scanned data into a selected folder for easy information sharing.
3. Scan to FTP ...

Both options 1 and 3 are great for us. I could easily setup an FTP server on my OS X machine that would work in a multi-user environment, and of course the USB function is very simple. The Amazon reviews suggests this feature works, though they also point out that the replacement toner cartridges are fantastically expensive and that B&W printing drains the color toner [1]

I'm going to have to look into these capabilities. The fact that they're not marketed more widely does emphasize what a weird bird I am ...

[1] Every vendor I know of is guilty of some form of toner scam. It's an instance of irresistible emergent fraud. In the case of my Brother MFC -7820N the cartridge stops working even when it has ample residual toner. You cover up a transparent port to get a few more months of light duty printing. The scams for these color printers are substantially nastier.

The sorry state of OS X device drivers

I've written before about the lousy quality of OS X scanner drivers. Today Scott Gruby, a vendor of OS X software, provides some details on miserable Epson drivers and makes a limited recommendation:

Scott Gruby’s Blog -- Accepting responsibility for bugs

... The only scanners I recommend are the Fujitsu ScanSnap and the Pentax DSMobile 600. The ScanSnap series don’t use TWAIN drivers so they can’t blow up ReceiptWallet and the Pentax DSMobile has incredibily well put together drivers. My guess is that they didn’t start from legacy code....

Things are so ugly out there I think Apple needs to start certifying device drivers. Vendors would then be incented to invest in drivers that earn certification and the right to advertise compliance.

Macintouch - scanning tips

I'm reasonably good with a scanner, but I still appreciate these tips ...

Macintouch - Scanners

... Just to give an upper bound on the required resolution, standard 35mm film has a resolution of approximately 4000 lines per inch. Printed material is lower resolution, though I do not happen to know it off hand.

If you are scanning slides or negative, there is no point at scanning the film at more than 4000 pixels per inch; there simply is no additional information beyond that resolution.

For printing, a quick rule of thumb is the image resolution should be three times the printer resolution. If you have a 100 line per inch printer, then your image should be 300 pixels per inch after any size conversions (e.g. an image that will be 4x4 inches on a page should be 1200x1200 pixels for a 100 line per inch printer).

Note that on a typically 72 dpi monitor, the same image will only need to be 288x288 pixels)...

Create your own Quartz filter to reduce OS X PDF size

If you scan a B&W text page at 600 dpi into Adobe Acrobat, and apply fax-style run length compression you'll get a file of about 60K.

Use OS X to create the PDF and the size will be 2MB.

The difference is compression choice. Lossless run-length compression works very well for B&W, OS X is probably using JPEG or TIFF.

What you want are better ways to control PDF size in OS X. The default "Reduce Filesize" quartz filter is lousy, but this page tells you how to create your own filters: Shrinking and Compressing PDF's - Yeraze's Domain.

The trick is to use the ColorSync utility.

I'll have to see if I can create a good one for B&W text ...

The Brother MFC-7820N and Mac Leopard 10.5

When upgrading OS X , the cost of the OS is the least of your expenses. There's often software to be replaced [1], an immense amount of time lost to debugging , and the risk that hardware will need to be replaced.

I figured my 3 yo multi-function Brother MFC-7820N was at particular risk. Of course the paper feed has been having trouble, so maybe it's near the end of its lifespan anyway (versus the LaserWriter 360 that preceded it and would have worked for another 20 years if I'd been able to find toner).

In fact the printing worked out of the box with native drivers. There are supposedly native drivers for OS X fax send as well, but I haven't tested that.

After the 10.5.5 update Image Capture even found the device and could drive a scan, but that might have been a residual effect of the 10.4 install. I don't know if that would always work.

The 10.5 update deactivated the Brother "control center" that enables the push-button scan to server feature [2]. Happily, there's a great article on how to restore this functionality in 10.5.5: Inspired by I-57- Brother MFC-7820N and Mac Leopard 10.5 .

Briefly, you download the latest drives from Brother's MFC download site, install, then use "DeviceSelector" to point to your network device. See the Inspired article for details.

I also did a firmware update using Brother's Java updater. I had to reset the printer but power cycling it, but then the update worked well. Remove the phone line (!!) to prevent dangerous interruptions, don't pull the power line, don't mess with your Mac during the update. I'll see if this helps with some printer quirks (such as having to power cycle after scanning to restore printing!).

Credit to Brother for continuing to provide drivers for the scanning button. I don't care for how the software works (basically running an obscure server on the desktop, doubtless a big security hole), but it is a very nice feature [2, again].

[1] Actually most of my old software worked fine with 10.5.5, even s/w that didn't work with 10.5.1.
[2] Why doesn't anyone sell a scanner with embedded Linux that would scan a PDF to a thumb drive?

Scanning prints - inexpensively

I have negatives for the thousands of prints sitting in a waterproof box in a protected closet in an upstairs bedroom.

At the current rate of scanning we'll scan them all by 2140.

I think I'm going to use this service Pogue reviewed (he warns of a hideous web site) ...

State of the Art - Your Photos, Off the Shelf at Last - NYTimes.com:

... ScanMyPhotos.com ... says it will professionally scan 1,000 photos for you, the same day it receives them, and put them on a DVD for $50.

So what’s the catch?

Actually, no catch, but lots of fine print.

ScanMyPhotos relies on a certain commercial Kodak scanning machine, which processes hundreds of photos a minute. There’s no reason other companies couldn’t buy the same machine and set up similar services. Indeed, some have, although most charge 12 to 16 cents a photo, compared with the 5-cent ScanMyPhotos rate.

Because it must feed your photos through this machine, ScanMyPhotos has set some rules. Photo sizes can range from 3 by 3 inches (Polaroids) to 11 by 14.

The photos must be put into similar-size bundles (4-by-6 prints together, for example) with rubber bands. The only way to label the batches is to write on [same sized - jf] index cards, which are scanned along with the photos like title cards. If you want the bundles scanned in a certain sequence, you can number the index cards...

There is also, however, the terror of sending away your valuable photographs. ScanMyPhotos asserts that it has scanned more than eight million customer photos, and has never lost or damaged a single one. But there’s always a first time; consider the fate of DigMyPics.com, a rival company. In May, a fire burned its headquarters to the ground, destroying almost everything inside — including some customers’ original photos.

Yet there’s a risk of doing nothing, too. Photos kept in a dry, cool and dark place don’t deteriorate nearly as quickly as audiotape, videotape and film reels. In fact, properly stored, they can last a century or more. But because photos are still susceptible to a wide variety of destructive or negligent forces, the ScanMyPhotos service could turn out to be the best $50, plus shipping and optional services, you’ll ever spend...

If my prints are lost, I can scan the negs.

Stop your iPhone from auto-launching iPhoto, Aperture, etc

OS X recognizes the iPhone, in part, as a camera.

So attaching the iPhone to a cable triggers camera behavior. If you don't like iPhoto or Aperture launching on connection, you have to override this behavior for all camera-like devices.

I sort of figured that out, but where do you change this? It's not in system preferences -- where it should be.

Turns out it's buried in Image Capture preferences (tsk, tsk Apple). I knew that once, but my brain has trouble remembering illogical things.

Thank you TUAW and Google:

Stop your iPhone from auto-launching iPhoto (or Aperture, etc.) - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

... One particularly annoying thing about plugging in my iPhone is that it always launches Aperture and prompts for permission to import photos. While you should be able to turn this off (in the preferences of the Image Capture application)...

Obnoxious old Epson Scan bug: EPSON Scan cannot be started

I've just installed an Epson Perfection V700 scanner with Epson Scan software dated Jan 2008.

It has the same bug referenced on Macintouch 3 years ago:

Macintouch - Multifunction Peripherals: Epson

Feb. 16, 2005, Julian Hearne
... the Epson Scan software for the CX5400 is not compatible with OS 10.3.7’s Fast User Switching! It works fine in an Admin account, but if you switch to another user account it creates an error message dialog box in the middle of the users desktop stating “EPSON Scan cannot be started . ---”. You can dismiss the message but each time you switch to another users account, except Admin, the message reappears...
Epson Tech Support says it’s a known issue and kind of blamed it on OS X...

Dave Robertson
I have reported a similar problem [as Julian Hearne] to Epson Support. Using Fast User Switching on an eMac (10.3.x) with an Epson CX5300 results in the continual appearance of a dialog saying "EPSON Scan cannot be started."

The dialog cannot be dismissed or clicked on in any way and it floats above all other applications. The only way to clear it is to run the "Activity Monitor" application and quit the "Twainbridge" process.

I found a 2004 Epson document saying Epson Scan is not compatible with Fast User Switching.

Happily a single chance hit gave me the clue -- the real problem is Epson Scanner Monitor and Fast-User Switching. That led me to a post by some obscure geek quoting Macintouch:

... Someone on August 10 mentioned that they were having problems with the Epson Scanner software on their G5. I had this issue as well; however, I removed the Epson Scanner Monitor startup item from my login profile.

This is used to allow the user to press the hotkey buttons on the Epson scanner; however, it's not necessary to use the scanner. Anytime I want to do a scan, I either open up the Epson scan software (which should be possible through Photoshop as well) manually then do my scanning. No more monitoring software eating up CPU cycles...

Oh ... wait, the above Macintouch quote is from a post I wrote in 2005.

Sigh.

Well, this time I couldn't find Epson Scanner Monitor in any of my Login Items [1]. It was running though, I could find the process with Activity Monitor.

I killed the process and deleted Epson Scanner Monitor.

The problem appears to have gone away.

So now the front button scan doesn't work, but that's no big deal. I never use those buttons anyway, this is a photo scanner not a document scanner.

So now the mystery is how Epson can manage to be so #$$@ $%%!@% incompetent? (Alas, the answer is that they don't have to be really competent, they only need be better than Canon.)

See also a 2004 post of mine on why device drivers suck.

[1] There's a design flaw in 10.4. Non-admin users can't see their Login Items, but admin users can't see other user Login items either.

Update 2/24/2008: Ok, Epson is only #$$@$ incompetent -- because Apple is even more incompetent. Last time I looked Apple made the iPod, OS X and the iMac, but if you use 'Fast User Switching' with an attached iPod you end up with a "this iPod is corrupted" message. I suspect either Apple fundamentally messed up Fast User Switching with 10.4 or they just don't care.

Epson still rates as "#$$@$ incompetent" because there are so many easy things they could have done besides trying to work around Apple's bad design. Here are 3 of them, it's easy to imagine more:

1. Document the problem and the fix in online FAQ and a readme file.
2. Detect Fast User Switching, deactivate Espon Scanner Monitor and inform the user.
   
3. Provide an easy way to uninstall or deactivate Epson Scanner Monitor...

Hmm. Maybe malevolent as well as incompetent ...

Curious results of various image formats: OS X Preview and PDF

Image compression is a tricky thing. For example, few people know that PNG is by far the best format to use for screen shots; vastly better than JPEG, GIF or (shudder) BMP. (Ok, so Word's mysterious internal format is pretty darned good -- but it's a mystery.)

Storing black and white scanned document images is even odder, however. Consider these results from PDFs generated by my Brother MFC-7820N document scanner (1 page, 300 dpi, b&w). In each case I saved from OS X preview:

• Original PDF: 132kb
• PNG: 155kb
• JPEG 2000 lossless: 296kb
• JPEG 2000 good quality: 380kb
• JPEG: 328 kb (artifact can be seen)
• TIFF zip compression: 220kb
• TIFF alternative compression: 216kb

A PDF of a scan is simply a wrapper, like TIFF, around some other format. PDF uses different compression depending on the image. A B&W image does very well with ancient run-length compression, so I suspect that's what's being used. I was surprised by how large the TIFFs were -- I think OS X Preview isn't providing the optimal compression for a b&w image.

Interesting that JPEG 2000 lossy is almost 40% larger than lossless for a b&w image. I thought I'd get better results there.

PNG, as always, does very well for lossless compression. A shame they never put any $!#$% metadata into the file specification!

Note that iPhoto will handle all of those image formats except PDF.

Buying a portable document scanner for OS X? Start with the drivers

Scott Gruby authors some document management tools for OS X. In response to a comment I wrote on his blog he mentioned some document scanner drivers he likes:

Scott Gruby’s Blog : Quality HP Software: "I’m quite fond of the drivers for the Syscan DocketPORT 465 (same as the Pentax DS Mobile 600). They’re simple and get the job done; it is up to the scanning application to come up with the interface instead of building it into the driver."

I think any hardware review should begin with the drivers. Drivers define real world functionality, and badly written drivers can make the entire OS unusable.

I'm disappointed, but not surprised, that this hasn't caught on anywhere. No computer review site I'm aware of starts hardware reviews by discussing software drivers. Sigh. The world really needs a few more rebels.

If MacWorld, for example, would filter products based on drivers, no HP product would ever get more than 1 out of four stars, and Canon products would never get more than 2 stars.

Of course that wouldn't help MacWorld's advertising budget, would it?

Scanning old snapshots: My current workflow

Recently I wrote about using OS X "Image Capture" for photo Scanning. I've gotten some praise for the results, so I figured I'd detail my current scanning workflow.

My goal is fairly quick image acquisition of about 3,000 low quality 3x5 and 4x6 prints. Speed is more important than quality. The very best images, probably less than fifty, will be rescanned using a high quality Nikon Film scanner. After scanning is completed the prints will be discarded but I will keep the negatives in a single large binder.

Scan output is, for now, manged in iPhoto. If Aperture ever allowed us to edit date metadata I'd use Aperture. [foul language censored]

I thought I'd be doing this using a sheet feeder, dropping the prints in and returning hours later. I can't find a decent one for working with prints; the only one I can find is the SnapScan and they've historically not imaged prints. I'm using an old Epson 1660 Photo scanner, but if my secret weapon continues working I'll invest in the Epson V700 -- if I do that I might try bulk film scanning instead.

My secret weapon is the combination of an 8 yo with a Lego habit, OS X "Image Capture", and Aperture post-processing. Ben is willing to work for low wages [1] and Image Capture is simple enough he can go through 20-40 scans while I work on an adjacent machine.

He scans at 400 dpi with no adjustment and the images are output as TIFF. The results at this point are mediocre.

When Ben is done I drop the TIFFs into Aperture and optimize one image: auto-level, sharpening, noise reduction and contrast enhancement with some mild color saturation adjustment. I then apply the set to all images. (I think I can save it as a standard setting but I haven't done that yet. iPhoto 8 can also be used in a similar way, but iPhoto 7 would be very inefficient.)

A few minutes later Aperture is finished. I quickly review the results but usually I'm done with the initial work. I then crop the images fairly extensively. Lastly I export as 98% JPEG and I delete the TIFFs.

The JPEGs are renamed using 'A Better Finder Rename', since Image Capture adds a counter to the string "Scan" I rename "Scan " to YYMMDD_RollNumber_# where # is the counter produced by Image Capture. YYMMDD is based on the date of the roll, and Roll_Number comes from the prints. The roll number binds the roll of JPEGs with the set of prints with the set of negatives. I don' t capture the actual print or negative number, the roll ID is good enough for my purposes.

I then drop the JPEGs into iPhoto and add ratings, date estimates, and comments. I choose one date for a range of prints and add it with a 1 minute separation using iPhoto's batch update. The iPhoto roll information includes the YYMMDD_RollNumber identifier. The five star prints will later be replaced by VueScan negative scans from a Nikon CoolScan V.

The resulting images are impressively better looking, on screen, than the original prints.

[1] Amazingly this is legal for one's own child. I should mention that once he can do this without my help his wages will rise to whatever he can get from the neighbors for their scans. Of course I could start charging him for the scanner...

Update: This article on scanning with Aperture is pretty good. Note that Aperture has a big date problem. You can't revise the acquisition date. True, you can set a date in the IPTC extended image creation date field, but Aperture mostly ignores that field value. I use Aperture for editing, but iPhoto for archiving.

Interesting comment on scanning color negatives

Color negatives are hard to scan. This is rarely mentioned ...

Scanner Review: Microtek ScanMaker i900

... Converting color negatives to positive is a black art. We discussed it at length in two Advanced articles, explaining what the orange mask does and the proper way to account for it. Fortunately, Microtek's two software solutions both include advanced negative conversion modules that, if nothing else, are excellent starting points. SilverFast Ai includes NegaFix and ScanWizard Pro has a similar feature, as does VueScan...

In my experience, given limited time, you may get better seeming results from a high quality print than from a negative -- especially if the negative is old. Color is funny.

Epson vs. Canon scanners: who has better OS X support

I'm thinking of getting a flatbed scanner that will do at least 12 35 mm negatives in one batch job. I want to pay under $600. It seems my choices are Epson and Canon.

I could check review sites, but they're almost always worthless. There's another way to make a choice. Which driver software is most compatible with OS X? The first place to check is the relevant support sites.

Epson has some dated material on their site, but they at least have a page outlining scanner support that was current as of 10.4.4. I liked the long list of scanners that work out of the box with OS X Image Capture. The current V700 PHOTO has universal drivers tested through 10.4.9 and is directly supported by VueScan without drivers.

Not bad. Now lets look at Canon. I've previously written about the horror of a CanoScan install, and Canon's printer drivers are notoriously ill mannered. (HP? You're joking, right?)

So they're off to a bad start, but let's try Canon's 8800F page. They have software, but nothing about Intel, Universal, OS versions, etc. Not good. Vuescan won't work with the 8800F unless the Canon drivers are installed. Not good. OS X support page? Minimal.

Gee, that wasn't so hard. I didn't have to look at a single product review.

BTW, if you want a review, this is the best I found for the V700. Scanners aren't changing very much, so I'm comfortable buying at the high end. The Nikon slide scanner I bought 3-4 years ago is still current today.

Update 9/24/07: Product Recommendations from Ed (vuescan) Hamrick (emphases mine):

Best 35mm film scanners: Nikon CoolScan (all models) - good color, good quality, fast

Best low-end flatbed scanners: Canon LiDE 20/25/30 - small, inexpensive, get power from USB [jf: but horrid OS X drivers]

Best high-end flatbed scanners: Epson Perfection 4990/V700/V750 - fast, good quality

Best A3 document scanners: Epson GT-15000 and GT-30000 - reliable, good quality

Best raw file software: Adobe LightRoom - reads VueScan's Raw DNG files (Apple's Aperture doesn't)

Another point for the V700. So Canon is out completely, but Epson isn't completely unchallenged, because now I'm adding the Microtek i900. BTW, I found this bit of the review very useful:

If you scan a 35mm film frame at that resolution, your maximum enlargement for a 300-dpi dye sub printer is 4x6. To get an 8x10, you have to be able to scan 2400 dpi...

That's a nice reference to ahe at hand. To do a 35mm scan comparable to a modern dSLR the resolution would have to be at least 10,000 dpi, which probably exposes the limits of film.

Update 9/24/07: I was very tempted by the Microtek i900, but it turns out that they have a serious customer service problem ... They sound like a pretty small company. So if the device has no problems it might be the best scanner on the market for its price range, but if anything goes wrong you're out of luck. (I do love Amazon's reviews, esp. the 1 star reviews ...)

... Microtek customer "service" was anything but helpful. In fact, they have ONE technical support person on staff--I know because I spoke to him several times.

...I contacted the service department for Microtek who send you to an online repair service that will give you an email response in 48 hours. Turns out that the unit that I paid over $500 for is out of warranty and there is NO repair service for Microtek in the United States!

... I almost bought the i900, but wound up buying the i800 instead. You can read my full review under the i800 page, but basically I've had a pretty terrible experience with this company. My scanner suddenly broke after a couple of months, and the only way to contact their tech support is to wait until they email you back which seems like it takes anywhere from three days to two weeks. My replacement scanner had very dirty glass on the inside surface...

Update 1/6/08: The Epson V700V750 is still their flagship product. This technology doesn't change much any more! An excellent UK MacUser review summarizes strengths and weaknesses. After market negative holders might be indictated.

Image Capture for Scanning: the 2nd most underestimated OS X application

Preview is probably the most underestimated OS X application, but Image Capture is close second. For years I've tinkered with a scanning workflow simple enough to outsource to my mother. I came close with Vuescan, but, really, it's still too tricksy.

Today I set my 8yo up with Image Capture, which I'd only recently realized is Apple's OS X scanning tool. He's keen to earn some Lego money, so I told him I'd pay 5 cents for each scan.

I plugged in my old Epson 1660* and Image Capture recognized it immediately. (Had I installed drivers years ago, honestly I don't recall. Most scanner manufacturer software is horrid, so I try to avoid it.)

The scanning worked like a charm. It was very fast at 300 dpi, a bit sluggish at 600 dpi (a new scanner would be faster, no doubt, with only a few bugs and missing features:

1. Image Capture won't remember settings between sessions, but it does remember them during each session.
2. If you keep the default name of "scan" it increments each scan with a number, but I don't think this works correctly if you change the default name. No matter, I used 'A Better Finder Rename' to embed date metadata in the file names. Keep the default.
   
3. The "auto" image improvement setting produced poor results. Manual has quite a few settings (similar to Preview's image editing tools) but I chose None since I was going to edit the lossless scans in Aperture and export archival JPEGs.
4. Don't use PNG. It works fine in Image Capture, but Aperture has trouble with PNG thumbnail creation. It's clearly a bug. I should have just used TIFF, I'm not keeping the TIFF anyway.
5. I had IC set up to launch Preview to view each scan, but sometimes it fails to launch. A bug, so I just turned off Preview. It slowed things down anyway and the confirmation wasn't necessary.
   

Ben's not used to real work, so he started to lose interest after the first 25 scans. Unfortunately I chose a pack that had pictures of his brother in it pre-Ben, I'd have done better with one that starred Ben. I know he wants a Star Wars Lego, so I'm confident he'll be back to his slave labor, though I may have to go to 7 cents/scan.

Here's Apple's blurb on Image Capture, note the reference to Apple's abandoned (they abandon a lot of their tech, it's surprising nobody calls them on this) "Services". iPhoto doesn't even show the Services menu, and Aperture shows it but doesn't support Services ...

Apple - Mac OS X - Image Capture

... Just plug in your digital camera or scanner and you can now directly import your pictures from any application that supports Services and Rich Text Format. All you have to do is choose Services in the Application menu and select Import Image. Image Capture lets you download all or any portion of the contents of your digital camera, crop images to a variety of sizes and delete unwanted pictures from your camera. And you can be sure that your captured images remain true to their source, because Image Capture embeds ICC profiles in the images you download or scan.

Want to share the bounty of your digital images? No problem. Image Capture lets others access the contents of your digital camera or scanner over a Bonjour network. Or create an Automator workflow to send photos to the parents.

The Automator workflow sounds interesting, but really there's not much to improve on from my point of view. It would be amusing if Image Capture were able to pull images off my despised Motorola RAZR phone via Bluetooth, but I loathe the phone to much to bother testing.

*Scanners aren't improving all that much, these are print scans, for the serious work I co-own a semi-pro Nikon film scanner.)

DevonThink: Digitizing paper documents

The Mac has two persistent significant weaknesses. One is speech recognition -- there's nothing on the Mac comparable to the best XP solutions. Speech recognition is still a niche market however. The other has been imaging and document management -- a bigger market. The Mac OCR software I've seen has been a leftover from another era. So this Macintouch announcement caught my eye:

MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh

DEVONtechnologies LLC released DEVONthink Professional Office 1.3.2 and DEVONthink Professional 1.3.2, which update the top end of the company's information management software line. The Pro Office version adds support for MailTags 2.0 notes, an option to the resolution and the compression of PDFs generated by the built-in IRIS OCR engine, support for ExactCODE's ExactScan software to drive Avision document scanners, an option to set default encoding for email import, and better detection of URLs in text messages... DEVONthink Professional Office is $149.95 and DEVONthink Professional is $79.95 for Mac OS X 10.3.9 and up (Universal Binary).

DevonThink is a senior instance of the many information management solutions for OS X, like most DT suffers from the fatal flaw of proprietary data stores. All of these products have had to figure out where to go post-Spotlight; full text search eliminated a portion of their value proposition without introducing file format lock-in. DT seems to be focusing on the problem of managing paper document stores with PDF files, wrapping the old IRIS OCR engine with a modern software environment. If someone would only produce the scanner I want (very easy to do, so the failure to make a what I want puzzles me ) DT would be one of the first products I'd turn to ...