simple-scan should offer a preview mode

The assumption is most people will have scanners that are fast enough to scan without preview. Doing a preview will actually slow down your workflow in this case.

Keeping open to see how users go without preview.

I expect in the future the default profiles will be editable in the preferences, i.e. basic users wont notice them, medium users can create a preview profile, choose dpi etc. Advanced users should install an advanced scanning tool (xsane, gscan2pdf etc).

I really like how simple scanning is without going to previews.

Before simple-scan, I used XSane from GIMP to get scans. This was a complicated process, using the gimp window, the xsane window, the preview window and sometimes even the batch scan window.

Now, I just use simple-scan and I just do a scan.

Maybe I could have 'just scanned' pictures with XSane as well, but somehow it never happened, and I always used preview.

I am not saying that I am strongly opposed to having the possibility to do preview in simple-scan, but you should aim to keep the workflow as simple as possible.

Bug 483386 is to make custom profiles - if you have a slow scanner you would then be able to make a preview mode. I'm keeping this bug open to see if others think a preview is required but I'm not getting any feedback that it is (and Seb told me his scanner is quite a few years old)

A preview is useful to for the following reasons :
- it's fast (real scan can be fast too if you have low resolution or really good hardware).
- it could avoid adding a page to your multiple page documents before your certain of the cropping/position of the subject.
- It can permit precise cropping of the subject before the real scan. It's a must if your scanning a small picture with a high resolution)

If you add a page you can always delete it by doing Page>Delete or pressing the delete button. To align crop you can scan, place the crop, then rescan and delete the trial image if necessary. Crop should be remembered even when starting a new document (not working yet).

Hi,
I am not sure if I understood the summary. Will there be a preview before the scanning or not?
I would strongly vote for a preview where the area to be scanned can be defined. I just made a test on my not that old HP printer scanner combo device. If I would want to scan some of my old non-digital pictures with high quality resolution (>600DPI) I would need about 5 to 6 minutes for one picture with about 130mm to 100mm size because I need to scan the whole page first. With 30 or 60 photos this would be a nightmare to do!
Another point would also be, that mainly every scan program I ever seen has a preview mode. So this is what the users would expect. (at least I was confused when there wasn't one). Without it, it is a bit like shooting into the dark :)

just my 2c,
schaze

schaze, what was the purpose of doing the preview scan? If you need a preview then why not just do a scan at 75dpi first?

Hi Robert, not sure if we talk about the same thing. With the current simplescan there is no real purpose of doing a 75dpi scan first, as I will have to do the scan of the full page afterwards anyways.
The idea of the preview was, to do a scan with the lowest DPI settings, then be able to mark an area of the picture (like the crop tool) and then press on scan. With this, the scanner could move quickly to the beginning of the start of the area to scan (without scanning or with lowest setting, I don't know what is possible here), then scan to the end of the marked area, stop and move back. This way I would only have scan lets say 15% of the full page height in high DPI resolution and would be a lot quicker.

Just as an example for my scanner I just stopped the time:
Scanning 1 picture at 1200 DPI with simplescan: 4min 32sec

Scanning 1 picture with a 'preview capable' scan program:
Preview scan: 4 secs
Actual scan: 1 min 16 sec

I know that the goal of simple scan is to be simple, which makes a lot of sense. All the DPI, colorspace, filetype, a hundred windows and other settings stuff of XSANE completly overstained my mom and gf all the time. Putting this up in the profiles was a brilliant idea, as most people never have to worry about the details, but only have to choose the suitable predefined profile (Text, Photo). Any experienced user can still change the preferences and not loose a lot functionality. So this is a good thing. But there is no possibility to do a scan with a preview at the moment.

Thanks for clarifying that. Simple Scan does not support scanning partial pages (it uses the full scan area always).

I support the idea of this workflow though it wouldn't be the default. This needs some thought as to how or if it can be cleverly integrated into simple-scan (maybe through a plugin) or this is better left to "Advanced Scan".

First thoughts on how to integrate this:
- Add a new item to the drop-down menu on the scan button "Draft".
- Clicking this scans a page in draft mode - the page is clearly marked as a draft with "draft" written above it
- Clicking scan rescans the draft page and uses any defined crop area to set the scan area

The difficulty then is what do do when scanning a second page - do you use the cropped area again? I think there will have to be a checkbox - "Scan only in cropped area". I am a little wary of people turning that on by default though and not noticing why the rest of the page is not scanned.

It sounds more and more feasible - it's worth working on to see what the result is like.

Hi Robert, I am glad hear that you like the idea :)
You are right, it is not so easy to integrate that in the current program without confusing the user.
I like the definition 'draft'. This makes a lot more sense than 'preview'.

How about, after the first page was scanned with a draft mode there will be another entry in the dropdown box called "Scan cropped area"?

So anyone knowing what they are doing can drop down the menu and select this one actively. All others will do a full scan of the second page by just clicking the scan button or doing another draft mode scan again.

This way it would be one more click only (which could still be shortend by a keyboard shortcut for experienced users who want to scan 20 pages with same area and always click twice)

Alternatively, you could simply add the checkbox to the crop submenu,
then given the way the crop rectangle appears, it should be blatantly
obvious that the scan is limited to the crop rectangle?

The question really is at what stage it goes beyond 'simple' - for
instance, an invertible scan is simpler for scanning books, so would you
add an 'invert' checkbox too? Unless the answer is that people who need
marginally more advanced features without joining the color group :-D
need alternative software :-)

I believe Roberts concern was for the second page to scan. You wont see a crop rectangle there when you don't do another draft scan, as there is no page displayed before a scan. So the unexperienced user might not notice that he will scan again with this setting and think the program does not work correctly any more.

I agree with you on your second paragraph. And after Lucid will be finally released today I think a lot more comments and requests on features for simplescan will drop in. If all would be implemented, the result would probably just be another version of XSANE. (powerful, but not at all simple)

I think the question is which features are needed to keep the application as simple as possible and yet serving the most possible amount of people.
E.g. I love the simple interface and work-flow of simplescan, but I barely ever need to scan whole pages so a preview/draft mode is important for me. And in the end I will have to go back to XSANE because of that. But this is just me. If only a view people need this feature then I am obviously part of a minority that will have to use an alternative, and that is fine then. If 80% of all people need or want a preview/draft mode, it is probably worth thinking about it. And with Roberts idea above no complexity is added to the default work-flow of scanning a whole page. It is still: open simplescan. click on scan. done.

Why do you not add a very simple low-resolution-preview mode like the one in the simple scanning tool integrated in Windows XP. It is as simple to use as Simple-Scan except it has the preview mode many people would like to have.( the mode described by Schaze from the beginning). Anyway I would be very interrested to have this preview mode in Simple Scan and therefore in Ubuntu in order to select the area I want to scan more quickly. You should think to all people still owning an old scanner (Epson perfection 1250 for me, not so old though !). Reasonably speaking, most people are not ready to buy a more recent scanner just because a software appears. I said reasonably because of course I do not expect Simple scan to work with a very very old scanner, but maybe . . .

So it would be well if Simple-Scan had more than the only following option : to scan the whole page not in a low-resolution-preview mode. You might add an advanced profile, an option you have to choose in the preference menu for example, to allow advanced users to do a preview in a low resolution mode, crop an area, and then with the start of the scan, the scanner would go quickly to the beginning of the selected area without scanning and then only, would begin to scan up to the end of this area. It would be a quicker and more accurate tool in addition to the current functionalities. I do not think it would be any more complicated since it would be an advanced profile you do not have to switch to if you do not want. Take a look at the simple scanning tool embedded in Windows XP for the preview mode.

Please mark this bug triaged again. Thanks in advance.