Linux scanner

Hello! I have been using a plustek 7500i with my mac until now, but would like to switch my work flow over to my Linux system. However I discover to my disappointment that plustek do not have any Linux drivers. Does anyone have any recommendations for film scanners that work with Linux?

You might be able to make it work with WINE.

Have you tried plugging it in anyway and seeing if xsane can see it.

Otherwise, pretty much any flatbed scanner should work with xsane, or indeed most any of the linux scanner utilities.

Most scanners do not have linux drivers from their manufacturers. Vuescan software is a scanner driver that is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows that supports hundreds of scanners. Most of them will work with the Linux version of Vuescan, but unfortunately, your Plustek is not one of them. It works on Vuescan but only with Mac or Windows. Nikon, Minolta, and Epson scanners do work on the Linux version of Vuescan.

It might be easier for you to install Windows on your computer as a dual-boot system and just boot into Windows to scan, that way you do not have to buy a new scanner and new software.

Oops didn't spot you're a mac guy.

Dunno then

[QUOTE="chriscrawfordphoto, post: 1984783, member: 19235]. Most of them will work with the Linux version of Vuescan, but unfortunately, your Plustek is not one of them. It works on Vuescan but only with Mac or Windows..[/QUOTE]
Is that true for the 32-bit version? That's what I had to download for my Plustek to work on my 64-bit Windows System. The 64-bit version would not work with the Plustek.
OP might shoot Ed an email.

Even if the OP is a Mac user, giving things a shot under WINE is usually worth the effort if a native Linux option doesn't readily work. Linux has come a very long way in the last decade, but it still isn't always a complete and total replacement for Windows in some cases, but WINE goes a long way in bridging that gap.

juan said:

[QUOTE="chriscrawfordphoto, post: 1984783, member: 19235]. Most of them will work with the Linux version of Vuescan, but unfortunately, your Plustek is not one of them. It works on Vuescan but only with Mac or Windows..

Click to expand...

Is that true for the 32-bit version? That's what I had to download for my Plustek to work on my 64-bit Windows System. The 64-bit version would not work with the Plustek.
OP might shoot Ed an email.[/QUOTE]


Yeah, Mr. Hamrick's website says that the Plustek scanners will only work with Vuescan if you also have Plustek's own drivers installed, and since Plustek does not make a Linux driver, Vuescan can't run the Plustek scanners on Linux.

Vuescan can drive many other scanner brands, like Nikon, without the original manufacturer's drivers installed, so those scanners will work with Vuescan on Linux.

Thanks for all the answers so far.

I am currently duel booting Mac OSX and Linux, and using Vuescan for my mac. The issue I had was that darktable, my preferred editing software, seems really buggy on a Mac, but works perfectly on Linux. For example, it crashes when I have folders with Jpegs and Tiffs in it.

For now, I am scanning on my mac and then transferring the files to linux. It works, but is mildly annoying. I hadn't thought of WINE, but I will give it a shot.

The plustek issue is seriously annoying. I really like the scanner and it produces great results, but why no linux version? how difficult can it be?

I was thinking of going to a flatbed so that I can scan 120, but the quality of the plustek dedicated 35mm is so good I feel I might lose something, and the vast majority of what I do is in 35mm. If I buy a flatbed to add to the 35mm scanner my wife might murder me.

I haven't tried Vuescan under Linux, but that's one option and pretty economical too, since the $80 license gives you access to OS X, Windows and Linux versions of the software.

But if you plan to use a popular Linux distribution like Ubuntu, you may not need to spend the extra money - chances are, everything you need is either pre-installed or can be had with just a couple of mouse clicks. And a good place to start is with the xsane-gimp software package: Nice graphical user interface and accessed as a pluigin from within GIMP. IIRC, there's also a standalone version of xsane if you prefer to go that route.

Even when a manufacturer officially supports Linux, you generally aren't going to find prepackaged software installers as you do for Windows and OS X but rather, the functionality may already have been rolled into the appropriate software.

ginandtonic said:

The plustek issue is seriously annoying. I really like the scanner and it produces great results, but why no linux version? how difficult can it be?

Click to expand...

It is very likely that Plustek did not release the description of the commands the scanner accepts and that the culprit is not VueScan but Plustek. As said by others, a Nikon scanner works without the original drivers. I should add that VueScan is much more powerful than the original Nikon software. With VueScan you can obtain "raw" scans (of various degrees of "rawness") and you can use multiexposure (scanning with different lamp intensities and merging the images, so that you dig into the shadows) and multiple pass (with average of the result) and both functions combined (multiple pass and multiexposure). Those options depend on the scanner (not all scanners support the functions). If memory serves, the original Nikon software does not exploit all the possibilities of the Nikon Coolscan 5000 and VueScan does it (!). The programmer of VueScan seems to work very hard to support each scanner the most he can. The limited support for Plustek scanners must be due to Plustek's opacity regarding the products.

I have Vuescan X64 V9 running on Fedora 23, for the Epson V600
For the PrimeFilmPro 120 scanner, I have an old XP that runs Vuescan 32 as a host for the scanner.
The XP is accessed from Fedora by rdesktop. The XP also runs FileZilla as a ftp server.

I have a script on Fedora that auto transfers the big Tiffs over to Fedora, for finishing with darktable.
The tiffs are checked and deleted on the XPhost
(Vuescan session has to be shut down before running this script)
--------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/bash

HOST=172.XX.XX.XX
USER=XXPS
PASS=XX
#PR_HostDir=
PR_LocalDir=/run/media/XX/59993675-0fb5-41ca-a4e6-926170cb391a/ArchivePhotos/UU_Scans/170820Scans
cd $PR_LocalDir
while :
do
sleep 15
#yes |cp -u * /run/media/XX/59993675-0fb5-41ca-a4e6-926170cb391a/ArchivePhotos/UU_Scans/170820Scans
#-i no prompting. -n no auto-login -v verbose
ftp -inv $HOST << E1
user $USER $PASS
nlist / PR_XPscans.txt
bye
E1
PR_newscan=""
PR_null=""
for PR_scan in $(cat PR_XPscans.txt); do
sleep 15
PR_scan=$(basename "$PR_scan")
echo $PR_scan
for PR_file in $PR_LocalDir/*; do
PR_file=$(basename "$PR_file")
echo "----"
if [ ${PR_file} == ${PR_scan} ]; then
echo "MMMmatch"
PR_newscan=""
break
else
echo "NNNEwscan "$PR_scan
PR_newscan=$PR_scan
fi
done
if [[ ${PR_newscan} != ${PR_null} ]]; then
echo "GGGetting "$PR_newscan
ftp -inv $HOST << E2
user $USER $PASS
binary
get $PR_newscan
bye
E2
echo "CCChecking "$PR_newscan
ftp -inv $HOST >sizechk.txt << E3
user $USER $PASS
binary
size $PR_newscan
bye
E3
PR_localsize=$(stat -c%s "$PR_newscan")
echo "____localsize check_____"$PR_newscan >>sizechk.txt
echo "213 "$PR_localsize >> sizechk.txt
PR_ckhost=$(sed -n '9p' < sizechk.txt)
PR_cklocal=$(sed -n '12p' < sizechk.txt)
echo $PR_ckhost
echo $PR_cklocal

if [[ ${PR_ckhost} == ${PR_cklocal} ]]; then
echo "DDDeleting Host "$PR_newscan
ftp -inv $HOST >sizechk.txt << E4
user $USER $PASS
binary
delete $PR_newscan
bye
E4
rm -f sizechk.txt
rm -f PR_XPscans.txt
fi
PR_newscan=""
fi
done
done
exit

I use Linux for more of less everything, but I too have scanners that don't have Linux drivers and an A3 printer that again only has Windows drivers (and then only up to Windows XP). What I do is this - find the optimum version of Windows that will work with your drivers, I use XP as it is small but still works well enough. Windows 7 is also OK, but it's more bloated. Find and old valid windows installation disk. Again, loads of XP sitting around in drawers, try to get one with Service pack 2 already on if possible Use Oracle Vitrualbox (free) to create a virtual XP machine on your Linux box and install XP into that. Fire it up and install the drivers to XP for your scanner or in my case, printer. You will have to mess around with the permissions in Linux to get it to work with a USB device, add Vboxuser to your account. There is lots of help on this on the web. Note that firewire is not supported. Create a shared folder between your linux machine and the XP machine (such as /images or /scans or /prints or whatever) and point your scanner to save to that. Then, when you want to scan, fire up the XP virtual machine (as it's in a stored state it boots in seconds), scan in XP and the images are saved to your Linux folder. Simples....

ginandtonic said:

Hello! I have been using a plustek 7500i with my mac until now, but would like to switch my work flow over to my Linux system. However I discover to my disappointment that plustek do not have any Linux drivers. Does anyone have any recommendations for film scanners that work with Linux?

Click to expand...

I am not sure about Plustek but I just found Epson V500 Linux drivers here: http://support.epson.net/linux/en/iscan.php?model=gt-x770&version=1.0.0

Have you tried installing XWindows on the Mac partition and running the FreeBSD version of Darktable? MacOS X is BSD based. I haven't tried running XWindows in the last few years as there aren't any Linux programs in which I was interested that didn't have MacOS X ports.