PaperScan Free Edition

5.0 stars

"Excellent considering this is freeware"

January 14, 2012  |   By bob-bountiful-utah

Version: PaperScan Free Edition 1.4.0.4

Pros

It works with WIA and TWAIN scanners. I used WIA for my quick evaluation. I like ability to set color-mode, paper-size and resolution one time only, and thereby more rapidly scan multiple pages.

Freeware similar to two commercial versions: a Home Edition & Professional Version. The Home Edition is free to students. I encourage students to evaluate this app (this app has document management tools superior to my version of Adobe Acrobat).

During my brief search I found several freeware apps -- all inferior to PaperScan (FreeScanner, DeskScan, iCarbon, PaperArchiver and iCopy).

Cons

The only bugs I found were with the file save (or perhaps save-as) commands, however I quickly learned how to work around these bugs.

Summary

On 1/13/2012 I spent several hours searching for a good freeware "General Purpose" Scanner Application, where "General Purpose" means that it works with all WIA and/or TWAIN scanners. I wanted software to replace the poor software that came with my HP 4470c Scanjet (purchased several years ago).

I found this excellent freeware application. It works with WIA and TWAIN scanners (I use the WIA option). It is a limited version of a commercial application, which often results in a good and reliable application. What I like is the ability to set the color-mode, paper-size and resolution one time only, and thereby more rapidly scan multiple documents. The only bugs I found were with the file save commands, however I quickly learned quickly how to work around these bugs.

It is similar to their two commercial versions: a Home Edition and Professional Version. The Home Edition, which permits scanning to a multi-page document is free to students. I would encourage students to evaluate this application, because PaperScan also includes many document management tools that are actually superior to those found in my version of Adobe Acrobat (Version 8 Standard).

During my relatively brief search I found several freeware applications, however none of these applications can compare to PaperScan, matter-of-fact I deleted all of them because of their limitations and/or defects which for me rendered them useless. These other applications: FreeScanner, DeskScan, iCarbon, PaperArchiver and iCopy. I was also often directed to Free Kapture 2.0, but I wasn't able to download and test it. There are also other applications that I unwantedly discovered while looking for freeware that are actually trialware, e.g., Scan2PDF, etc. As such I was very glad to find PaperScan.

To overcome inability to create a multipage document (a freeware limitation) you can use pdfsam (PDF Split And Merge Basic) to merge results (an open-source freeware application).

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