Author Topic: New scanner features for Screenshot Captor (Read 23953 times)

mouser · « **Reply #25 on:** July 22, 2009, 02:46 PM »

New beta is up;
color mode settings and image file type overide are now in place.

tomos · « **Reply #26 on:** July 22, 2009, 03:14 PM »

Colour working

I can't test the background remover because I have light background but have two thin strips of dark either side (I using white page to create light background & it doesnt fill the scan area)

Auto-straighten image works very nicely

Is there any way to cancel after starting a scan ?
~~Is there an option to revert to last saved version of file ?~~ Menu > File > Discard all Changes . .

mouser · « **Reply #27 on:** July 22, 2009, 03:30 PM »

Is there any way to cancel after starting a scan ?

not yet.

I can't test the background remover because I have light background but have two thin strips of dark either side

i might be able to add ability to specify custom scan area/margins, which take care of situations like yours.

tomos · « **Reply #28 on:** July 22, 2009, 04:05 PM »

I can't test the background remover because I have light background but have two thin strips of dark either side
i might be able to add ability to specify custom scan area/margins, which take care of situations like yours.
-mouser (July 22, 2009, 03:30 PM)

or I could get a bigger piece of paper for the background lol
seriously though, that could be helpful - I'm thinking of reducing the scanning area to A4 cause I rarely if ever scan more than that, and the full area of the glass doesnt get scanned anyways

mouser · « **Reply #29 on:** July 22, 2009, 05:13 PM »

Yeah i was thinking it would be useful to reduce the scan area and speed up scanning.
Added and uploaded.

mouser · « **Reply #30 on:** July 22, 2009, 10:30 PM »

New beta up with completely new interactive rotation-correction tool for scans.

mouser · « **Reply #31 on:** July 23, 2009, 12:36 AM »

New beta up with more flexible interactive background removal options.

tomos · « **Reply #32 on:** July 23, 2009, 02:33 AM »

morning

Rotation tool is working very well
-
only thing (very minor) is it can take a while to make the rotation if you choose 'Auto-detect' - might be a good idea to show an hour glass/waiting symbol ?

I was able to narrow down the scanning area - I presume in the 'Scan specific area' that the 'Left' & 'Top' boxes create a margin that isnt scanned? Worked here anyways

Background removal -
I cant get this to work - scanning dark image on white (paper) background - it could be the fact it's paper - it's texture does get scanned which probably makes it difficult to remove - will try with a sheet of photo paper later

mouser · « **Reply #33 on:** July 23, 2009, 02:38 AM »

Background removal -
I cant get this to work - scanning dark image on white (paper) background - it could be the fact it's paper - it's texture does get scanned which probably makes it difficult to remove - will try with a sheet of photo paper later

the new system lets you tweak the tolerance interactively; its that number down on the scanning toolbar.
as you change that now, youll see the selection box try to pick out the foreground. try values around 140 or so.

tomos · « **Reply #34 on:** July 23, 2009, 04:44 AM »

1) funny I just did exactly the same scan again (rectangular card, at an angle - needed an angle of -4 to correct skew) and auto-detect skew didnt work this time . . no idea why - instead of the required -4° rotation, it rotates image by 0.0999999999999943° (!)

2)

Background removal -
I cant get this to work - scanning dark image on white (paper) background - it could be the fact it's paper - it's texture does get scanned which probably makes it difficult to remove - will try with a sheet of photo paper later

the new system lets you tweak the tolerance interactively; its that number down on the scanning toolbar.
as you change that now, youll see the selection box try to pick out the foreground. try values around 140 or so.
-mouser (July 23, 2009, 02:38 AM)

A problem with Background removal:

it doesnt seem to work if the image is skewed
it doesnt seem to work then if the image is rotated and the image 'frame' is skewed
i.e. it requires a non-skewed image in a non-skewed frame to work properly

tomos · « **Reply #35 on:** July 23, 2009, 04:54 AM »

1) funny I just did exactly the same scan again (rectangular card, at an angle - needed an angle of -4 to correct skew) and auto-detect skew didnt work this time . . no idea why - instead of the required -4° rotation, it rotates image by 0.0999999999999943° (!)
-tomos (July 23, 2009, 04:44 AM)

same scan again and it worked this time $:-\$ - an hourglass would definitely help though - I have clicked it and nothing has happened (could be my keyboard's fault of course, at times I find I have to be assertive with it)

with select foreground & remove background selected a selection box snaps to one corner of the scanned card

mouser · « **Reply #36 on:** July 23, 2009, 04:56 AM »

it only works by selecting a foreground recentangle.
but i've not had any trouble if the main image is straightened and the frame is angled.
you might make sure you have the proper scan bed color set in options.

yeah an hourglass would help.

mouser · « **Reply #37 on:** July 23, 2009, 05:07 AM »

may i suggest you not use auto remove backgroun on the scan options.
instead, choose select foreground only
then use the MANUAL foreground select threshold on the scan toolbar to experiment with threshold level.

JoTo · « **Reply #38 on:** July 23, 2009, 05:23 AM »

Found a problem!

I have chosen to let SC open my scanner dialog (better said, it opens automatically because i have forgotten to insert a document into my pull through scanner before scan invocation).

Then i was diverted to sth. else. When i came back to my scan i have had forgotten that the dialog was still open. I was not in mood to scan now and closed SC.

Then i got a problem. SC won't close at all and freeze, and the worst thing was, that my scanner dialog was also still open and freezed also.

A nice deadlock.

I was forced to use TaskManager to kill the SC process to get rid of my scanner dialog at the same time as from the SC window.

Greetings
JoTo

mouser · « **Reply #39 on:** July 23, 2009, 05:26 AM »

Lesson learned: Do not tease Screenshot Captor!

mouser · « **Reply #40 on:** July 23, 2009, 06:05 AM »

New version up with hourglasses for long scanning operations and better statusbar messages.

JoTo · « **Reply #41 on:** July 23, 2009, 07:45 AM »

mouser,

what do you mean?

Maybe i was not clear enough. I could work in SC even when the scanner dialog was open. But when i then try closing SC i get a full hang of SC.

If you think, this is teasing, i must reply...if SC depends on the opened dialog (and this seems to be true or why would SC refuse to close normal if not depending) it should safely disable its main window and do a Bell() when clicking sth. in it, as it is with every modal dialog within an app. Then the user is aware of "something is open anywhere" and can close that first.

Or do i misunderstand you here?

Greetings
JoTo

cranioscopical · « **Reply #42 on:** July 23, 2009, 10:18 AM »

By some error you seem to have received an alpha copy of mouser's secret project, SCSK (Screenshot Captor and System Kidnapper).
Please sign the attached 1,000-page NDA and never speak of this again!

mouser · « **Reply #43 on:** July 23, 2009, 11:17 AM »

Joto, if you can reproduce the problem in latest Screenshot Captor versions let me know -- as far as i can tell SC does open the scanner dialogs modally, and shouldn't let you interact with it until you finish scanning. It sounds like perhaps something else went wrong and the scanner dialog being open was just a coincidence.

Occasionally I have found an SC bug where some SC dialog pops up modally but gets hidden behind sc window and then sc becomes unresponsive (alt-tabbing to SC usually fixes that).

mouser · « **Reply #44 on:** July 25, 2009, 07:36 PM »

SC now registers itself as an application that can handle scanner button requests (unless run in portable mode), so you can trigger SC to scan when you push a button on your scanner.

mouser · « **Reply #45 on:** July 26, 2009, 01:27 AM »

Some more info on the new scanner features, from the help file:

There are plenty of utilities designed to help you scan images with your scanner and manipulate them, some free and some commercial (e.g. Paperport).
And most modern scanners come bundled with a scanning utility or two.

So why add scanning functionality to Screenshot Captor?

Screenshot Captor is designed to stay resident in your system tray, and make it easy for you to take lots of multiple screenshots with little intervention.

The scanner functionality in Screenshot Captor follows the same philosophy -- it aims to help you do very quick scanning of multiple documents.

It's also designed to perform the common image corrections, and includes special functions for automatically and manually detecting the foreground of scans, cropping, and adjusting for small rotation alignment problems.

The program also makes it easy for you to do things like:

Save in different formats (including PDF).
Print images.
Email images.
Configure hotkeys to start a capture.

To enable scanning functionality in Screenshot Captor, go to the Scanner Options tabs in the program preferences, enable the scanner features checkbox, and choose your scanner.

Screenshot Captor supports both TWAIN and WIA scanner interfaces, and can be configured to use the native scanner dialog for your scanner or bypass it completely.

Screenshot Captor registers itself as an official imaging application in Microsoft Windows, so if you have buttons on your scanner, you can configure these buttons to trigger an automatic scan inside Screenshot Captor (or manually configure a shortcut that passes the -scan commandline parameter).