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			22 lines
		
	
	
	
		
			1,008 B
		
	
	
	
		
			Markdown
		
	
	
	
	
	
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author: einar
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categories:
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- Linux
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comments: true
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date: "2007-07-04T21:26:31Z"
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slug: command-line-scanning
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title: Command line scanning
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omit_header_text: true
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disable_share: true
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wordpress_id: 269
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---
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Recently, I had to do a few scans with my old but trusty BenQ 640BU. Given that I could not use any GUI due to a [long-standing Feisty bug](https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/85488), I tried to settle for command line scanning with the scanimage command from [SANE](http://www.sane-project.org). The main problem is that scanimage only saves images in PNM or TIFF formats. I wanted to use JPEG or PNG, but apparently that looked impossible to do.
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Instead, I found that  scanimage sends its results to standard output, and also that ImageMagick can accept standard input as source file, it was easy to convert on the fly:
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[code lang='c']
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scanimage --format pnm | convert -format png - test.png
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[/code]
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"-" tells convert to use the standard input. Another great example  of the power of the command line.
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