LaserSoft Imaging

Hello,

We are the developers of a medical/dental imaging application, and one of our application features is scanning of R?ntgen films.
To do so, we need a scanner capable of scanning transparancies. Until recently, we used the UMAX scanners for this, but UMAX has stopped their business. As a replacement, we have found the Epson 4990.
Our customers/users are demanding ease of use, and they don't want any GUI for their scanning jobs, therefore we are controlling the scanner completely through TWAIN commands. With the UMAX line, this was working perfectly, but with the Epson, we have a problem.
To select the transparant mode, we use the capability option ICAP_LIGHTPATH. This option has 2 possibilities:
TWLP_REFLECTIVE or TWLP_TRANSMISSIVE. We use TWLP_TRANSMISSIVE, no problem there.
But Espon Scan (GUI) has 2 transparant options:
Film Holders (default) or Film Area Guide.
These options are NOT controllable trought TWAIN (as far as I know), and because Film Holders is the default setting, the maximum scan area is limited to 9.1"x5.7". This area is way to small for our customers.
Has somebody an idea how to set this option default to Film Area Guide, or a (custom) twain command to do so?
I've send this same question to Epson Support, but after 15 e-mails, it's clear for me now that they can't help us, or simply refusing it? They also told me that they don't support Twain?!?

If we can't resolve this issue, we need to find another brand of scanner which is capable of scanning transparancies with a minimum area of 8"x10"
Anybody an idea?

Thank you for your help!

Hello ImageLevel,

Epson customer support is horrible (and the level of tech support you're likely to reach are not very bright anyway), so I'd advise you to try posting your question on a newsgroup. The Silverfast forum doesn't get a lot of traffic, so you'll probably get much better suggestions by posting at a busier forum like one of these:

http://photo.net/bboard/forum?topic_id=1701

http://www.photo-forums.com/

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x/a/frm/f/99609816

You might also want to try contacting the developers involved in the SANE project. (Scanner Access Now Easy). Their website is here:

http://www.sane-project.org/

Good luck!

Thank you for your help!

We may have found a replacement for the Epson, the Canon CanoScan 9950F. It has also a large transparancy kit, and the price is even lower. I hope their Twain support is better then the lousy support of Epson.

Good for you! That's Epson's loss.

There's an in-depth review of the Canon 9950 at http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Scanners/Canon_9950F/page_1.htm. The site owner is Vincent Oliver and he's very helpful about answering particular questions in regards to the products he reviews. You can post in the forums here:

http://www.photo-i.co.uk/BB/

Or contact him directly via email:

digitographer***@***aol.com

(Just remove the * symbols).

Best wishes.