Scanning Slides
on Linux
(Ubuntu MATE 20.04,
circa 2021)

with an Epson
'Photo' Scanner
(Epson Perfection
V100 Photo scanner)

(with notes on 'iscan' software
installation & use on Linux)

The Epson 'iscan' software interface.
Note the 'Preview' and 'Scan' buttons.

This interface image shows version 2.30.1.
The interface for 2.30.4 looks the same.

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This Scanning-Slides-How-To-for-an-Epson-Photo-Scanner page
(with notes on install & use of 'iscan' on Linux)

! Note !
A few more notes and images may be added,
if/when I re-visit this page again.

Links to sections of this page below:

INTROduction       Initial Scan Attempts


Intall of 'iscan'       Initial 'iscan' Run Attempts


Slide Scanning with 'iscan'


More Scanning Info       Bottom of Page

INTRODUCTION :

I have many boxes of slides of our family from about 1972 through about 1995 --- wife, kids, friends --- on vacations and at home.

After about 1995, I was no longer taking slides with a film camera --- and taking the film to be developed at a local film developing service (like Walgreen's or Costco).

The advent of digital cameras --- and subsequently 'smartphones' with built-in digital cameras --- pretty much ended the era of film cameras and slides and slide projectors.

It has for many years now (from about 2005 to 2021) been my intention to digitize our hundreds (if not thousands) of slides.

In 2021, I decided to use an HP laptop computer as my 'slide-making-workstation' --- and I wanted to do it with an Epson 'Photo' scanner that I bought around 2006 --- an 'Epson Perfection V100 Photo' scanner.

I also wanted to do the scanning using an Ubuntu-MATE operating system installed on the HP laptop --- since I like to use Linux (and, in particular, the MATE desktop operating environment) on most of my computers.

I installed Ubuntu MATE 20.04 over Windows 10 on the HP laptop computer (in April 2021) as I have described in a web page on UbuntuMATE 20.04 install on an HP laptop (in April 2021).

That page describes a lot of the software packages that I installed on the laptop, including several packages that could possibly be used with this Epson Perfection V100 scanner --- namely:

  • 'imagescan', version 3.65.0 from a '.deb' file from an Epson download page, for 'Image Scan v3'
    (at support.epson.net)

  • 'simply-scan', installed via the Ubuntu 'Software Boutique'

  • 'xsane', installed via the Synaptic Package manager

The following sections describe how I tried to use some of these packages (in November 2021) after connecting the Epson Perfection V100 scanner to a USB port on the HP laptop.

Spoiler alert:
I ended up installing an additional Epson software package --- 'iscan' --- and I describe that install below --- followed by a description of using 'iscan' to scan slides.

Initial Scan Attempts

I powered onthe HP laptop that I will call 'HPlaptop01' --- and I logged in using my userid (not 'root').

I first tried the 'imagescan' software, which I invoked by clicking on an icon on the MATE desktop 'top panel'.

'imagescan' did not detect any scanners --- even though I had the Epson Perfection V100 Photo scanner plugged into the laptop (via a USB plug) and the scanner was powered on.

    This icon invoked Image Scan 3.65.0 --- at /usr/bin/imagescan.

Since 'imagescan' did not work, I clicked on the top-panel icon labeled 'Document Scanner'.

A popup message window appeared that displayed the message:

    Additional software needed.
    You need to 'install driver software' for your scanner

where 'install driver software' was a link. I clicked on that link, and another message popped up:

    You appear to have an Epson scanner.
    Drivers are available on the 'Epson web site'.
    Once installed you will need to restart this app.

I did not try the 'xsane' software that I had installed on 'HPlaptop01'.

Instead I decided to go to the Epson site, as described below.

Install of 'iscan'

I did a web search (with DuckDuckGo), on keywords:

I found an Epson Download Center page on which I entered 'Perfection V100' for the 'Product Name' and 'Linux' for the 'Operation System'.

When I clicked on the 'Search' button, I was presented a page with a 'Download' button for version 2.30.4 of a Perfection V100 'Scanner Driver' (release 08-22-2019).

When I clicked on that 'Download' button, I was presented an 'Epson - drivers & downloads' page with a Licence Agreement 'Accept' or Decline' buttons --- for 'Product name' 'GT-S600' for the Perfection V100 Photo scanner --- version 2.30.4 (08-2019) --- for Linux.

When I clicked on the 'Accept' button, I was presented the option to download an Epsion 'iscan' manual (in English) named 'iscan_man_e.pdf'. I downloaded that.

On that License Agreement page, I was also presented a 'Package Download Page' link. When I clicked on that, I was taken to a 'Linux Scanner Driver Download' page on which I could use a 'Download' button to down load the file

iscan-gt-s600-bundle-2.30.4.x64.deb.tar.gz

for the 64-bit(amd64) version of 'Image Scan! for Linux' for the Linux Distributions

  • Ubuntu
  • Linux Mint
  • Debian GNU/Linux.

    Note: In addition to the 'deb' option, there was an 'rpm' option for the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of 'Image Scan! for Linux' for the Linux Distributions

    • Mandriva Linux
    • Fedora
    • openSUSE
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I stored the '.deb' file in the 'Downloads' subdirectory of my home directory.

Now I wanted to install 'iscan'.

I checked the 'Image Scan! for Linux Manual' (PDF file) for install notes. It mentioned using an 'install.sh' script.

In addition, I found a note that said:

    "The SANE package version 1.0.3 or later must be installed before installing Image Scan! for Linux."

I used the Ubuntu MATE 'System > Administration' option of the 'top-panel' to start up the 'Synaptic Package Manager' --- in order to see if I had installed a suitable SANE version on this HP laptop.

SANE 1.0.14-15 was installed --- along with 'sane-utils 1.0.29'.

I decided to proceed with the install of 'iscan'.

In the 'Downloads' directory, I extracted the '.deb.tar.gz' package file as follows.

In the MATE 'Caja' file manager, I right-clicked on the '.deb.tar.gz' package file and chose 'Open With Engrampa Archive Manager' in the options menu that popped up.

I used an 'Extract' button of the Archive Manager.

The extracted files included an 'install.sh' file.

I opened a terminal window positioned in the directory containing the 'install.sh' file.

I ran the 'install.sh' file, using the command

    ./install.sh

at the terminal command prompt.

    My first attempt failed with a message indicating the install needed a lock file that was in use by the Synaptic Package Manager. I closed Synaptic. Then I ran 'install.sh' again, even though it had seemed to unpack and install a bunch of files in the first attempt. Fortunately, it seemed to run to completion --- accessing 'libs' over my internet connection --- at 'http://us.archive.ubuntu.com'.

Thus 'iscan' (version 2.30.4) was installed on this HP laptop computer.

The executable '/usr/bin/iscan' was now available.

Initial 'iscan' Run Attempts

I opened a terminal window and entered the command 'iscan'.

I got the message:

    "Could not send command to scanner.
    Check the scanner's status."

The scanner USB connector was connected to the HP laptop PC and the power light on the scanner was on.

I ran a 'man -k scan' command to look for 'scan' utilities that had been installed on this laptop.

I found names like

  • iscan
  • sane
  • sane-* (many such names; 'SANE backends')
  • scanimage
  • simple-scan
  • xsane
  • xscanimage

I tried the command 'xscanimage' and got the message:

    "No scanners identified.
    ... check that ... detected by
    sane-find-scanner."

Sure enough, 'sane-find-scanner' was among the 'sane-*' names.

I ran 'sane-find-scanner' in the terminal window and got 'Access denied' messages on 8 USB devices.

There was also the message

    "No USB scanners found.
    You may want to run this program as root to find all devices.
    Once you find the scanner devices, be sure to adjust access permissions as necessary."

I ran 'sudo sane-find-scanner' in the terminal window and got the message:

    "found USB scanner (vendor=0x0468[EPSON], product=0x012d [EPSON scanner] at libusb:002:004
    Your USB scanner was (probably) detected.
    It may or may not be supported by SANE.
    Try 'scanimage -L' and read the backend's man page.
    ..."

I ran 'scanimage -L' in the terminal window and got the message 'No scanners were identified'.

So I ran 'sudo scanimage -L' in the terminal window and got

    "device 'epkowa:interpreter:002:004' is an Epson Perfection V10/V100 flatbed scanner"

Then I ran 'sudo iscan' in the terminal window and the 'iscan' GUI interface came up in about 5 seconds.

I was now in business --- ready to try some scans using the 'Preview' and 'Scan' buttons on the 'iscan' user interface --- even though any files created would be owned by 'root' rather than my userid.

    NOTE:
    I may evenually do what one needs to do on Ubuntu distros to allow the scanner to be accessed by my userid rather than 'root'. (Some initial web searches indicated the need to edit a file or two in '/etc' or '/lib' subdirectories.) For now, I will save PCX scan-files as 'root' and remove the PCX files later --- after converting them to PNG or JPEG files owned by my userid (see below).

Slide Scanning with 'iscan'

To scan documents and slides, a couple of important option sets on the 'iscan' interface are the 'Document' and 'Image Controls' groups --- whose panel tabs can be seen in the 'iscan' user interface image at the top of this page.

The default 'Document' settings are:

  • Document Source: Flatbed
  • Image Type: Color Photo
  • Resolution: 300 dpi

The 'Document Source' setting needs to be set to 'TPU - Positive Film' to scan my slides.

The default 'Image Control' settings are:

  • Gamma: 1.20
  • Highlight: 230
  • Shadow: 10
  • Threshold: 160
  • Brightness: 0
  • Contrast: 0

When I get more experience in doing slide scanning, I may find that I will need to change some of the 'Image Control' settings --- and/or I may need to do 'Tone Correction' by dragging points on the line-graph for the four different color options.

For now, I have found that I need to follow the following several-step process --- to scan 4 slides at a time.

  1. Insert up to 4 slides in the scanner slide holder - shiny side down - and click on the 'Preview' button.

  2. Select a slide in a 'marquee' (as the 'iscan' manual calls it). In other words, use the mouse cursor to pick one corner of a slide image in the 'Preview' window, and drag to the opposite corner of the slide image.

  3. Set the 'Resolution' option of the 'Document' panel to a setting like 1200 (generally more than 1000 pixels).

  4. Click the 'Scan' button --- and specify a file location and name.

      NOTE:
      The output format options 'JPEG' and 'PNG' were grayed out for me, so I used the default 'PCX' format. I can use my 'FE Nautilus Scripts' 'IMAGEtools' utilities, that use the ImageMagick 'convert' command, to convert the PCX file to a JPEG or PNG (or GIF) file.

  5. Perform steps 2, 3, and 4 above for the other 3 slides.

  6. Go to step 1 for the next set of 4 slides.

I may add more guidance here after I get more experience with the slide capture process.

In order to get good color capture from the slides, I may have to use the 'Image Controls' and/or 'Tone Correction' options to get a faithful color capture of the color in the slides.

For now, you (and I) can some 'WEB SEARCHES' (like those below) to find information on getting good slide captures using the Epson 'iscan' software.

    By the way, if I ever try using the 'imagescan' or 'simply-scan' or 'xsane' software (that I installed on this laptop, as described above), I may describe their use --- IF I find that any of them are good to use for scanning slides.

FOR MORE SCANNING INFORMATION:
(on Linux, with an Epson scanner)

To find more information on using a scanner on Linux (especially using an Epson scanner for scanning slides, on Ubuntu MATE versions of Linux), you can try WEB SEARCHES on keywords such as the following.

You can also try Wikipedia pages like the following, and following links on those pages for even more information.

Some Epson pages that have to do with their scanners and software for slide scanning include the following pages.

There are/were also some web pages on scanning slides with a flatbed scanner:

AND there are/were pages on document & slide scanning on Linux systems:

AND there are/were pages on slide scanning with Epson software on Microsoft Windows systems:

Bottom of this page
Slide-Scanning with an Epson photo scanner
on Linux (Ubuntu-MATE 20.04) --- including notes on
installation & use of Epson 'iscan' software.

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Page was created 2021 Nov 14.