TWAIN Scanning

TWAIN (Windows and Mac) is a scanning protocol that connects scanners and applications together by providing standard interface. TWAIN allows applications to acquire images from TWAIN compliant devices (scanners, digital cameras, etc.). Most scanners come with TWAIN drivers that are installed automatically when you install the scanner in your computer. Please refer to your scanner documentation if there are no TWAIN sources available. When scanning using TWAIN Xodo PDF Studio will first launch the scanning application provided by the hardware, then once the scanning is complete import the scanned image to complete the Scan to PDF process.

Note: The TWAIN protocol is only supported in 32-bit installations of Xodo PDF Studio on Windows and Mac If you are using the 64-bit Xodo PDF Studio installation this option will not be available.

  1. Go to Convert Tab > From Scanner click on the small down arrow to the right of the scanning button and select "Scan to PDF (Twain)".
  2. Choose a scanner from the list and click on the OK button to proceed.  If there is an error with the selected scanner, the dialog will appear again with the previously tried scanner highlighted so you can choose a new scanner.
    • If the selected scanner had been a default option, you can use this dialog to change the default scanner by selecting the new scanner and checking the "Set default Scanner" option.
  3. When the OK button is pressed, your scanner's custom scanning application will open. This is a separate program that will allow you to preview the scan, choose a region to scan, adjust the scan resolution, and then accept the scan using the software that came with your scanner.
  4. Once the scan has been accepted and Xodo PDF Studio has received the data from the scanner software, Xodo PDF Studio will display a dialog box showing some information about the scan and will prompt you for a number of choices to determine how to insert the new image.
  5. Once you've selected the options click OK to then create a new PDF or append the image to an existing PDF depending on the option selected.

TWAIN Scan Import Settings

Image Info

This sections displays some basic details on the image that was received from your scanners software

PDF Options

Insert At - Where to insert the new image. Choose from the following options:

  • Beginning Of Document: Inserts the scanned pages before the first page of the currently opened document
  • Current Location: Inserts the scanned pages in front of the current page being displayed of the currently opened document
  • End Of Document: Appends the scan at the end of the document.
  • New Document: Creates a new document using only the scanned pages
  • Interleave – When scanning multiple images, this option can be used to insert them at every other page.  This is especially useful for scanning two-sided documents.
  • Reverse Interleave: Insert the scan in the current document at every other page in reverse order starting after the last page of the document.
  • Multiple documents -  Use this option to create multiple documents when scanning multiple pages. When selected a dialog will be displayed to set the following options.
    • Pages per PDF - Number of pages before creating the next PDF
    • File Name Pattern - The file name to be used when creating the PDFs. Each file will have the number of the document appended to the end of the file name
    • Save files To - Where to save the created files
    • Save as Default - When checked this will make the selected options the default going forward

Page Size - What size to use when creating a new page to hold the image.

  • Size to Image – The new page will be created the same size as the scanned image.
  • Same as Document – The new page will be created the same size as the current open document. If the document is empty or if the Insert At choice is set to New Document the new page will be created at the same size as the scanned image.

Compression - What compression to use when saving the image into the PDF document.

  • JPEG - Lossy compression (recommended compression)
    • Quality (for JPEG compression only) – If using JPEG, the compression quality can be adjusted from 1 to 100%.
      • 1 =  high compression, very low quality
      • 100 = low compression, very high quality
      • Generally, 80=high quality, 50=medium quality, 20=low quality
  • Flate - Lossless compression format
  • JBIG2 B&W -  Lossless compression format that only supports B&W color

Auto deskew images - When checked, if the document’s text/images are slanting too far in one direction or is misaligned, Xodo PDF Studio will attempt to auto-rotate the document so that the alignment is corrected.

OCR Options

OCR - Create Searchable PDF - Check this to automatically OCR the document after scanning

Language - Language to be used if OCR is selected. Click on "Download OCR Languages" to download additional languages.