Need Pi Scan to output .tiff, please advise

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ABell
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Joined: 22 Jun 2018, 14:02
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Need Pi Scan to output .tiff, please advise

Post by ABell »

I’ve got a highly specific question and I hope you all can help.

My work set up a DIY Pi Scan a few years ago; I'm not sure exactly when it was completed or what use it may have seen prior, but in the fall of 2016 I was tasked with making a user friendly guide for it, and troubleshooting documentation and the like. We used it for a family history event that fall, but after that it was more or less left to gather dust again until now. I think I’ve caught up on the major changes that Pi Scan V1.5 has to offer, along with the better/broader camera support, but I want to confirm I’m not misunderstanding something about the file formats the scanner initially saves.

Due to the requirements of library archival work, we are supposed to save images in .tiff with 600dpi or greater. Our initial build/older version of Pi Scan never supported this (that I could find), despite our camera (Canon SX160) being able to save .tiff in regular use. It seems that this is a setting that will be tweakable in the gp_camera_file_set_info with file info type allowing a switch from .jpg to .tiff. Can anyone confirm/deny/point me in the right direction?

Thanks so much!
duerig
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Re: Need Pi Scan to output .tiff, please advise

Post by duerig »

Pi Scan supports downloading raw images on DSLR and mirrorless cameras. But not on the cheaper point and shoot cameras. As far as I know, there is no way to generate TIFF files directly on any of the cheap point and shoot cameras.

At some point this summer (hopefully early in July), I plan to release the next version of Pi Scan which will include support for downloading raw images on cameras like yours. The raw images (in .DNG format) will be lossless and can then be converted losslessly to TIFF or any other image format.

I believe that there is already a way to use TwoCamControl to download raw images from Canon cameras like yours. TwoCamControl is an alternative controller program that runs on a PC or laptop. So if you wanted to use TwoCamControl, you would simply plug your cameras into your windows PC directly instead of into the Raspberry Pi. The link to the TwoCamControl project is here:

https://github.com/nod5/TwoCamControl

One other thing to keep in mind is that if you need to take scans with >600 DPI, you will likely need to focus in on the page and scan pages that are roughly 8" tall by 6" wide with those cameras. That is because it is a 20 MP camera.

-Jonathon Duerig
ABell
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Joined: 22 Jun 2018, 14:02
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Country: United States

Re: Need Pi Scan to output .tiff, please advise

Post by ABell »

Thank you so much for getting back to me. It's been a hectic few months here, so I apologize for my late response.

The math says our specific camera can only do 7.67" x 5.75" at 600dpi. I am trying to find some things I can suggest to modify our system to accommodate the requirements. To that end, a few follow up questions:

Does Pi Scan now support raw images from point and shoot cameras? If so, are there settings tweaks we need to make, as ours still takes .jpg?
Does anyone have any recommendations for cameras that would allow the entire 15" x 12" scannable area from our build to be captured at 600dpi/ppi? (I'm aware that'd require a camera over 60MP, and that there aren't any point-and-shoot cameras with 60+MP.)

All suggestions appreciated, and thanks so much for your time!
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