
The software discussed above works well for the most part and with a variety of hardware. This makes it perfect for scanning photos and art. When you scan with The GIMP, you not only get the opportunity to set a number of options (for example, whether it's color or black and white, the resolution of the scan, and whether or not to compress results), you can also use The GIMP's tools to touch up or apply effects to your scans. When combined with a plugin called QuiteInsane, The GIMP becomes a powerful scanning application. You probably know it as an image editing tool. Those aren't killer features, but they give you a bit more flexibility.įinally, The GIMP. Unlike Simple Scan, gscan2pdf allows you to set the resolution of what you're scanning, whether it's black and white or colour, and paper size of your scan before you click the button.
#VUESCAN ALTERNATIVE PDF#
In addition to being able to save scans in various image formats (JPEG, PNG, and TIFF), you can also save a scan as a PDF or a DjVu file. It packs a few more features than Simple Scan but it's still comparatively light. You need to go into Simple Scan's preferences to change those settings. On top of that, Simple Scan uses a set of global defaults for scanning, like 150 dpi for text and 300 dpi for photos. That said, Simple Scan can be slow, even if you scan documents at lower resolutions.

After you've scanned a document or photo, you can rotate or crop it and save it as an image (JPEG or PNG only) or a PDF.


Simple Scan is easy to use and packs a few useful features. It's the default scanner application for Ubuntu and its derivatives like Linux Mint. It's what I've used extensively and found useful.įirst up, Simple Scan. Keep in mind that the software discussed below is hardly an exhaustive list of the scanner software that's available for the Linux desktop. Let's take a look at a three simple but flexible Linux scanning tools. Free online course: RHEL Technical Overview.
