Monday, January 21, 2013

Never Shall the TWAIN Meet

Having found the wonders and joys of the Neat Receipt portable scanner, I decided to explore the options of it's full capabilities and stretch my ideas to the digital limit.

Heidi was able to use Image Capture after just a click of the button and scan in COLOR and at 600 dpi!!!!  Her documents looked great!  I, on the other hand, was first limited to B&W and at 300 dpi by using the Neat software package (so far really the best way to keep receipts organized for tax and accounting/business purposes.)

I was NOT to be defeated by a Mac and so tried to use Nitro Pro 8 to scan in color and boost up my dots per inch!

Attempt 1: I received a "Failed to load TWAIN data sources" message and was instructed to re-install the program.  Stupid "technology without an important name" sitting between me and my impressive, but not imperative, dream of being able to scan in old high school awards and news paper clippings:



But which program should I tackle first to correct this fatal error?

Surly my Nitro Pro 8 was not the cause as with all it's wonders, I am able to: 1. open pdf files, 2. combine different pdf documents into one lager pdf, and 3. even save just the pages I wanted within a larger pdf file.

So it must have been my Neat scanner/software.... however everything else with scanning and detecting receipts, documents  and contacts from business cards worked perfectly (but only in B&W and at lower then optimal scan quality.)

Through tireless searching I found the solution!  Don't uninstall or re-install anything. Instead, delete the folders that had "Neat" from "C:\WINDOWS\TWAIN_32" and leave your "C:\WINDOWS\TWAIN_64" files alone.

Attempt 2: SOLVED!  Take that Mr. Samuel L Clemens!

Scans in color and at 600 dpi look great with Nitro Pro 8 and I'm able to save files as I choose, with OCR for better searching.


Thanks for reading,

Dr. Alex