sane-pieusb(5)

💅 sane-pieusb — the manual page 🎀

okay so first things first bestie, this is a page from SANE Scanner Access Now Easy (yes that's the manual name, we stan an acronym) and it's all about the sane-pieusb situation. let's get into it ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

sane-pieusb — the SANE backend for USB-connected PIE PowerSlide and Reflecta DigitDia/CrystalScan/ProScan slide scanners 🦋

⭐ DESCRIPTION ⭐

so the sane-pieusb library implements a SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) backend, and what it does is give you access to USB-connected PIE and Reflecta slide scanners. iconic behavior honestly 💖

right now, the following scanners should work with this backend — note the word should, bestie, we're being honest here:

• PIE PowerSlide 3600 — Untested
• PIE PowerSlide 3650 — Untested
• PIE PowerSlide 4000 — Untested
• PIE PowerSlide 5000 — Untested
• Reflecta CrystalScan 7200 — Untested
• Reflecta ProScan 4000 — Untested
• Reflecta ProScan 7200 — Untested
• Reflecta DigitDia 3600 — Untested
• Reflecta DigitDia 4000 — Untested
• Reflecta DigitDia 5000 — Untested
• Reflecta DigitDia 6000 — Ok

so yeah, one (1) confirmed Ok and a whole lotta "Untested" — she's a scrappy little backend and we love her for it 😭

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🎞️ MULTIPLE SLIDES 🎞️

support for multiple slide scanners (like the PowerSlide or DigitDia series, iykyk) is handled by auto-advancing — that's the 'Advance slide' setting — the slide after each scan. efficiency slay 🔥

but — and this is the important part — for best results it is recommended to do a preview for every single slide, because that preview sets gamma, brightness, and contrast to optimal values. no skipping, bestie, the preview is doing the heavy lifting 💅

Attention: SANE does not have automatic landscape/portrait detection and re-orientation when scanning multiple slides. You have to put all slides into one orientation first! fr fr, do this or suffer 🙈

🧼 DIRT REMOVAL 🧼

if available, sane-pieusb supports infrared scans for dirt detection and removal. this has to be enabled via the 'Clean image' setting. glow-up for your slides ✨

💀 KNOWN PROBLEMS 💀

okay so listen — the sane-pieusb backend supports dirt removal based on infrared scan information. but since SANE does not provide post-processing in the backend, sane-pieusb does the scanning and the dirt removal during the setup phase. the 'scan' phase is only used to transfer the completed image. the way that works 😭

which means: sane-pieusb does not multi-thread, making a typical frontend appear as 'blocked'. and also, cancel requests are only honored between scans. so yeah, be patient with her, she's doing her best 🫶

🐚 ENVIRONMENT 🐚

• SANE_DEBUG_PIEUSB — if the library was compiled with debug support enabled, this environment variable controls the debug level for this backend. E.g., a value of 128 requests all debug output to be printed. smaller levels reduce verbosity 👑

and here's the level tea, literally:

• 0 — nothing
• 1 — errors
• 2 — warnings & minor errors
• 5 — additional information
• 7 — SANE api calls
• 9 — backend functions
• 11 — scanner functions
• 13 — usb functions
• 15 — image buffer functions

📁 FILES 📁

• /etc/sane.d/pieusb.conf — the backend configuration file 🎀
• /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-pieusb.a — the static library implementing this backend 💜
• /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-pieusb.so — the shared library implementing this backend (present on systems that support dynamic loading) ⭐

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• sane(7)

📬 CONTACT AND BUG-REPORTS 📬

please send any information and bug-reports to:

Klaus Kämpf <kkaempf@suse.com>

go off, tell him everything, he wants to know 🫶

👑 AUTHORS 👑

the pieusb backend is based on work by Jan Vleeshouwers, Michael Rickmann, and Klaus Kämpf. legends, all of them 🌈

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and that's the whole page, bestie 🎀✨ this little doc was dated 10 Aug 2015, so if you're reading it in the future — yeah, she's vintage, and she ate 💅