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scanimage(1) SANE Scanner Access Now Easy scanimage(1)
NAME
scanimage - scan an image
SYNOPSIS
scanimage [-d|--device-name dev] [--format format] [-i|--icc-profile
profile] [-L|--list-devices] [-f|--formatted-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]
DESCRIPTION
scanimage 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) interface 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/usbscanner0'. 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, scanimage will attempt to open the first
available device.
The --format format option selects how image data is written to stan-
dard 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 /etc/sane.d). This is par-
ticularly the case when accessing scanners through the network. 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 place-
holders %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 spe-
cific command is provided to aid this: --batch-double will automati-
cally set the increment to 2. --batch-prompt will ask for pressing
RETURN before scanning a page. This can be used for scanning multiple
pages without an automatic document feeder.
The --accept-md5-only option only accepts user authorization 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 function 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 increas-
ing 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 capabilities 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 --brightness expects an
option value in the range from -100 to 100 percent. The value
in square brackets indicates 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 --bright-
ness option, the option-pair --brightness 50 --default-enhance-
ments 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 argu-
ment 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 abbre-
viate 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, attempting to set the option
would result in an error message. The set of available options
typically depends on the settings of other options. For exam-
ple, 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 particular mode by specifying the appro-
priate 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 cumbersome 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 gamma4scanimage can be
used to generate such gamma tables (see gamma4scanimage(1) for
details).
--filename [/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
/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 char-
acters.
SEE ALSO
sane(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 indication as to
how many elements a vector-value should have.
sane-backends 1.0.14 22 Feb 2004 scanimage(1)
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