good document scans like in Windows 7?

Development
1

This is an enhancement request for skanpage and skanlite.

I recently went back to scanning in Windows 7. There, I can get a crisp, black and white document scan in a small compressed tiff format.

(I have not tried later Windows versions. I need Windows 7 for one application. I do not use Windows 7 for email or surfing.)

IMHO, a good scan file is high resolution and small. For the same resolution, smaller is better.

Using Windows Fax and Scan in Windows 7, I set the resolution to 300 dpi and scanned an ubuntu printer test printout. I get a nice looking image tiff that weighs in at 66 Kb.

You can see for yourself, you can download what I got here, filename:

Windows_Fax_n_Scan_ubuntu_print_test_2026-02-07.tiff

You can try it! Print a test page in your system settings, printers. Then scan it and compare what you got with what I got from Windows 7.

I asked askubuntu.com if any ubuntu scanner can scan good like Windows 7. That post is here. As of this writing, no one knew how to match Windows 7, but simple-scan came out on top of the ubuntu contestants. The simple scan file was more than twice as big as the Windows 7 file, and the text was grey not black. Note that I am comparing scans of the same piece of paper on the same printer/scanner, the only difference is the scanning application. The best I could do in simple-scan is here, filename:

simple-scan_text_300dpi_max_compress_2026-02-07.pdf

If skanpage or skanlite scan can do better, please tell me how.

I am hoping a Linux scanner can match Windows 7. Can skanpage or skanlite do it?

2

hi, welcome.

i use naps2 for my scanning needs as it has (almost) all the features i need in one app… here is the breakdown of the apps i tested and what i found.

without a b&w mode it was difficult to dial in the settings to achieve a good result

naps2 (.deb) --  no preview, saves as pdf(multipage), remembers scanner, b&w, OCR
document scanner -- real time preview, saves as pdf, b&w, no OCR
skanpage -- real time preview, saves as pdf, no B&W, keeps forgetting settings, OCR(separate export)
skanlite -- separate preview and scan, saves as pdf, no B&W, no OCR
vuescan (.deb) -- was problematic, didn't work, could not easily uninstall (left over bits)

document scanner would likely be my 2nd choice because i like the real time preview, as long as you don’t mind having to do OCR or combining pdf pages using a separate app

3

Looks nice - and it’s in the AUR as naps2 (to build) or naps2-bin to install, though I don’t scan often it looks cool.