scanimage(1) SANE Scanner Access Now Easy scanimage(1)NAMEscanimage - scan an image
SYNOPSISscanimage [-d|--device-name dev] [--format format]
[-i|--icc-profile profile] [-L|--list-devices] [-f|--for-
matted-device-list format] [--batch [=format]] [--batch-
start start] [--batch-count count] [--batch-increment
increment] [--batch-double] [--accept-md5-only]
[-n|--dont-scan] [-T|--test] [-h|--help] [-v|--verbose]
[-V|--version] [device-specific-options]
DESCRIPTIONscanimage is a command-line interface to control image
acquisition devices such as flatbed scanners or cameras.
The device is controlled via command-line options. After
command-line processing, scanimage normally proceeds to
acquire an image. The image data is written to standard
output in one of the PNM (portable aNyMaP) formats (PBM
for black-and-white images, PGM for grayscale images, and
PPM for color images) or in TIFF (black-and-white,
grayscale or color). scanimage accesses image acquisition
devices through the SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) inter-
face and can thus support any device for which there
exists a SANE backend (try apropos sane- to get a list of
available backends).
EXAMPLES
To get a list of devices:
scanimage-L
To scan with default settings to the file image.pnm:
scanimage >image.pnm
To print all available options:
scanimage-h
OPTIONS
The -d or --device-name options must be followed by a SANE
device-name like `epson:/dev/sg0' or `hp:/dev/usbscan-
ner0'. A (partial) list of available devices can be
obtained with the --list-devices option (see below). If
no device-name is specified explicitly, scanimage reads a
device-name from the environment variable
SANE_DEFAULT_DEVICE. If this variable is not set, scanim-
age will attempt to open the first available device.
The --format format option selects how image data is writ-
ten to standard output. format can be pnm or tiff. If
--format is not used, PNM is written.
The -i or --icc-profile option is used to include an ICC
profile into a TIFF file.
The -L or --list-devices option requests a (partial) list
of devices that are available. The list is not complete
since some devices may be available, but are not listed in
any of the configuration files (which are typically stored
in directory /usr/freeware/etc/sane.d). This is particu-
larly the case when accessing scanners through the net-
work. If a device is not listed in a configuration file,
the only way to access it is by its full device name. You
may need to consult your system administrator to find out
the names of such devices.
The -f or --formatted-device-list option works similar to
--list-devices, but requires a format string. scanimage
replaces the placeholders %d %v %m %t %i with the device
name, vendor name, model name, scanner type and an index
number respectively. The command
scanimage-f " scanner number %i device %d is a %t,
model %m, produced by %v "
will produce something like:
scanner number 0 device sharp:/dev/sg1 is a
flatbed scanner, model JX250 SCSI, produced by
SHARP
The --batch* options provide the features for scanning
documents using document feeders. --batch [format] is
used to specify the format of the filename that each page
will be written to. Each page is written out to a single
file. If format is not specified, the default of
out%d.pnm (or out%d.tif for --format tiff) will be used.
format is given as a printf style string with one integer
parameter. --batch-start start selects the page number to
start naming files with. If this option is not given, the
counter will start at 0. --batch-count count specifies
the number of pages to attempt to scan. If not given,
scanimage will continue scanning until the scanner returns
a state other than OK. Not all scanners with document
feeders signal when the ADF is empty, use this command to
work around them. With --batch-increment increment you
can change the amount that the number in the filename is
incremented by. Generally this is used when you are scan-
ning double-sided documents on a single-sided document
feeder. A specific command is provided to aid this:
--batch-double will automatically set the increment to 2.
The --accept-md5-only option only accepts user authoriza-
tion requests that support MD5 security. The SANE network
daemon (saned) is capable of doing such requests. See
saned(1).
The -n or --dont-scan option requests that scanimage only
sets the options provided by the user but doesn't actually
perform a scan. This option can be used to e.g. turn off
the scanner's lamp (if supported by the backend).
The -T or --test option requests that scanimage performs a
few simple sanity tests to make sure the backend works as
defined by the SANE API (in particular the sane_read func-
tion is excercised by this test).
The -h or --help options request help information. The
information is printed on standard output and in this
case, no attempt will be made to acquire an image.
The -v or --verbose options increase the verbosity of the
operation of scanimage. The option may be specified
repeatedly, each time increasing the verbosity level.
The -V or --version option requests that scanimage prints
the program and package name, the version number of the
SANE distribution that it came with and the version of the
backend that it loads. Usually that's the dll backend. If
more information about the version numbers of the backends
are necessary, the DEBUG variable for the dll backend can
be used. Example: SANE_DEBUG_DLL=3 scanimage-L.
As you might imagine, much of the power of scanimage comes
from the fact that it can control any SANE backend. Thus,
the exact set of command-line options depends on the capa-
bilities of the selected device. To see the options for a
device named dev, invoke scanimage via a command-line of
the form:
scanimage--help --device-name dev
The documentation for the device-specific options printed
by --help is best explained with a few examples:
--brightness -100..100% [0]
Controls the brightness of the acquired image.
The description above shows that option --bright-
ness expects an option value in the range from -100
to 100 percent. The value in square brackets indi-
cates that the current option value is 0 percent.
--default-enhancements
Set default values for enhancement controls.
The description above shows that option --default-
enhancements has no option value. It should be
thought of as having an immediate effect at the
point of the command-line at which it appears. For
example, since this option resets the --brightness
option, the option-pair --brightness 50 --default-
enhancements would effectively be a no-op.
--mode Lineart|Gray|Color [Gray]
Selects the scan mode (e.g., lineart or color).
The description above shows that option --mode
accepts an argument that must be one of the strings
Lineart, Gray, or Color. The value in the square
bracket indicates that the option is currently set
to Gray. For convenience, it is legal to abbrevi-
ate the string values as long as they remain
unique. Also, the case of the spelling doesn't
matter. For example, option setting --mode col is
identical to --mode Color.
--custom-gamma[=(yes|no)] [inactive]
Determines whether a builtin or a custom gamma-table
should be used.
The description above shows that option --custom-
gamma expects either no option value, a "yes"
string, or a "no" string. Specifying the option
with no value is equivalent to specifying "yes".
The value in square-brackets indicates that the
option is not currently active. That is, attempt-
ing to set the option would result in an error mes-
sage. The set of available options typically
depends on the settings of other options. For
example, the --custom-gamma table might be active
only when a grayscale or color scan-mode has been
requested.
Note that the --help option is processed only after
all other options have been processed. This makes
it possible to see the option settings for a par-
ticular mode by specifying the appropriate mode-
options along with the --help option. For example,
the command-line:
scanimage--help --mode color
would print the option settings that are in effect
when the color-mode is selected.
--gamma-table 0..255,...
Gamma-correction table. In color mode this option
equally affects the red, green, and blue channels
simultaneously (i.e., it is an intensity gamma table).
The description above shows that option --gamma-
table expects zero or more values in the range 0 to
255. For example, a legal value for this option
would be "3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12". Since it's cum-
bersome to specify long vectors in this form, the
same can be expressed by the abbreviated form
"[0]3-[9]12". What this means is that the first
vector element is set to 3, the 9-th element is set
to 12 and the values inbetween are interpolated
linearly. Of course, it is possible to specify
multiple such linear segments. For example,
"[0]3-[2]3-[6]7,[7]10-[9]6" is equivalent to
"3,3,3,4,5,6,7,10,8,6". The program gamma4scanim-
age can be used to generate such gamma tables (see
gamma4scanimage(1) for details).
--filename <string> [/tmp/input.ppm]
The filename of the image to be loaded.
The descriptoin above is an example of an option
that takes an arbitrary string value (which happens
to be a filename). Again, the value in brackets
show that the option is current set to the filename
/tmp/input.ppm.
ENVIRONMENT
SANE_DEFAULT_DEVICE
The default device-name.
FILES
/usr/freeware/etc/sane.d
This directory holds various configuration files.
For details, please refer to the manual pages
listed below.
~/.sane/pass
This file contains lines of the form
user:password:resource
scanimage uses this information to answer user
authorization requests automatically. The file must
have 0600 permissions or stricter. You should use
this file in conjunction with the --accept-md5-only
option to avoid server-side attacks. The resource
may contain any character but is limited to 127
characters.
SEE ALSOsane(7), gamma4scanimage(1), xscanimage(1), xcam(1),
xsane(1), scanadf(1), sane-dll(5), sane-net(5),
sane-"backendname"(5)
AUTHOR
David Mosberger, Andreas Beck, Gordon Matzigkeit and
Caskey Dickson
BUGS
For vector options, the help output currently has no indi-
cation as to how many elements a vector-value should have.
sane-backends 1.0.12 15 Apr 2003 scanimage(1)
