I’ve got projects coming up that will involve lots of scanning…lots and lots of scanning, and not just documents, but photos too. I’m looking to make the process as efficient and quick as possible.
After searching the web, it seems that two USB scanners attached to a computer couldn’t be used simultaneously due to a limitation of the Windows USB driver.
SCSI scanners would work (I think), but they are not terribly common anymore, and the ones that are available are wicked pricey.
There are tantalizing hints that this may be possible if one of the scanners is Firewire and the other USB, but I can’t find positive confirmation of this. Does anyone have firsthand knowledge about this issue?
If it is possible, what about the software/drivers? Could I simply open two instances of VueScan or IrfanView to control both scanners?
I’m not aware if there are residential priced machines, but at my office we have a printer/copier/scanner that in addition to having a traditional flatbed surface for copying/scanning also has a tray that you can load with any number of pages. It will suck each page individually into the machine and scan them (or copy them), it makes it very easy to scan huge numbers of pages at once, and the way we have it set up at my office you can configure it so each page scanned is saved as a .PDF file.
I paid a few thousand for it, but you might be able to find something priced for a home user that has that sort of feature.
There are some equipped with an ADF, but I don’t think that I can trust them to handle (possibly) fragile photos…and differently-sized photos in the same stack.
Having more than one scanner is perfectly possible. I have 2 on this machine as i type this. They will just appear as 2 different sources within the TWAIN driver.
Just to confirm… I’ve just simultaneously scanned 2 pages.
Obviously I couldn’t scan them into the same instance of a running application. But with 2 applications, or 2 instances of the same application it isn’t a problem.
The only problem you may have is the USB bottleneck. When scanning at high resolution the typical restricting factor for how fast you can do a scan is the USB bandwidth. So 2 very high resolution images scanned at the same time will not happen any more quickly than 2 sequential scans.
You can also look into a network printer/scanner. My HP Officejet has “Digital Filing” where you can define up to 10 preset folders on the network for it to save scans to. You could set up something like that to crank through documents on the ADF while you handle photos on the other scanner.
HP’s scanning program will let you put several photos on the flatbed and save them individually, so you can scan as many as will fit rather than one at a time. This would work with the scanner plugged into USB rather than the network.
This is interesting. I do currently have an HP Al-in-one (scanner/printer/fax) and it’s software doesn’t allow that. I guess that capability is specific to your scanner?
Running Win 7 64bit Ultimate. Scanning into 2 instances of GIMP (1 installed and the other portable).
(note: I’m using hacked drivers on the Epson to allow 64bit compatibility, however, this shouldn’t skew my results).
I don’t know if it is specific to the scanner, but it is part of the HP Solution Center. You might try getting the latest version from the HP site. Go to the Support and Drivers section, enter your model #, choose your OS, and pick the Full Featured Software and Drivers download.
As far as I know, there is no limit on the number of TWAIN devices, which includes scanners and digital cameras. The only upper limits are the number of USB controllers, as each can only handle 256 devices, and bandwidth problems.
If you have more than one USB controller, I’d suggest hooking the two different scanners up to two different controllers. You can see how many you have in the Device Manager, if you change the View to Devices by Connection.
Get a good scanner with an ADF. I use Fujitsu M510 and M1500 scanners here at the office, which cost about $400 each. We regularly put receipts, W-2s and other odd-sized, wrinkled and fragile documents through with no problem. If something is too valuable or too messed up, there is a clear plastic carrier that will protect it. They do a sound job on photos, even of mixed sizes. The only thing we can’t scan with them are rigid objects, like a driver’s license or a book. They are both duplex scanners, so you can even capture the front and back at the same time.
Each USB port on your computer does not necessarily have its own controller associated with it. Quite often you’ll have several USB ports going to a single controller. For example, you may have 4 USB ports in the back that all go to a single controller and 2 USB ports on the front which go to a 2nd controller. My PC happens to have 4 USB ports on the back that each go to a separate controller, and 2 USB ports on the front which share a 5th controller. YMMV.
As BigT said, you’ll get better performance if you put the scanners on two separate USB controllers.
Again, thanks to all for the suggestions. Here’s an update after Deflagration’s input:
I do have two USB scanners; one is an HP 2210 All-In-One, the other is a Canon 3200F (scanner). I’ve tried multiple combinations of USB ports and the HP always interferes with the Canon. Both scanners work as they should when told to scan separately, but the HP always causes the Canon to slow almost to a stop when trying to scan simultaneously using two instances of VueScan. The output from the Canon is quite distorted, as well. The output from the HP is as it should be.
Addressing engineer_comp_geek and BigT’s messages, I have taken a screenshot of my Device Manager so that you can see the USB connections involved. I did select “View By Connection”: Photo and Video Storage | Photobucket
You will see that the HP has many more entries than the Canon - I assume because it represents at least three devices.
These are not the scanners that I will ultimately use for this work - I was originally looking at purchasing two Epson V700 scanners because they have gotten very good reviews and they do have both USB and Firewire outputs. They are somewhat expensive, however, and I wouldn’t want to invest in anything unless I know that it works reliably and quickly.
Also, I am running XP Home on a Dell with 4GB RAM.
Please let me know if anyone has any further suggestions.
Prolly too late now but my suggestion would be to beg/borrow/steal another computer/laptop and have one scanner on each. It would be easy enough to transfer the scanned files, no?