Scanjet 5530

After a review in my PC Compter Mag. I went out and purchased the HP
Scanjet 5530 which has the photo feeder on top. I was looking forward
to it becuase my wife has been interested in archeiving her 1000's of
photos. This was the perfect solution. Not so fast...

The software and really the twain driver are really bad. First HP
wnts you to open up the HP Director program to start from. That's
easy enough. You can go into the preferences tab and set the
directory for the pic's to be scaned into. A very odd thing happens
when you go to the scan preferences and look at the "preview" tab.
You have four options. The last overrides the first three. This is
weird since you really only need a "yes" or "no" choice. And here is
where the first big problem begins. The Director does not communicate
your preferences for scanning to the HP Photo & Imaging program. More
about that in a second. After you set everything the way you like,
scanning a stack of 24 photos is simple. Just select "scan picture"
and PRESTO! all 24 pic's scanned in under 5 min's. What happens next
begins to be a desaster. In the HP Director you have no option of
what program to dump your photos into. It automatically opens up HP
Photo & Imaging and places them into your folder you chose when you
went into setup in the Director. Once in the HP Photo & Imaging
program things really turn weird. To begin with, the HP Director
gives you no way to batch name the files; so you have 24 pictures that
each have to be renamed individually unless you like the file names:
"scan001", "scan002", etc. For reference, the HP Photo & Imaging
program starts out in a "look alike" explorer type window. Trust me,
it is anything but that. The right mouse button is useless. If you
scanned a picture that doesn't fit your directory you created for them
then don't bother creating another file to put them into. You have to
leave the program and go into something like "explorer", creat the
directory and thengo back into HP Photo & Imaging and select "refresh"
from the "view" menu and then PRESTO! you can now see your new file.
Don't bother using the old tried and true "draw a box around the
files" you want to move trick. That isn't possible either. you
either have to use the Shift to Shift or the control select method.
That's more crap. Want to do the next batch of pictures? In the HP
Photo & Imaging program there is a handy button that let's you scan
from the Photo & Imaging program itself. Try it but beware. Remember
that none of those preferences you set earlier in the HP Director
never made it this far. And every pic that runs through the scanner
"MUST" be previewed. Which totally defeats the purpose of the photo
feeder. The only way to add more pic's is to go back to the Director
and start all over again.

Anyone know of any thrid party twian drivers that might help me. I'm
stuck witha machine that wants to be great but can't becuase of the
crap software that limits it.

Oh, I've called HP three times and evrything I say here is correct.
The affirmed the limitations of the software.

Eric O.

Eric,

One of my clients had a similar but more minor problem with her HP scanner. I
did a Google search for Twain drivers and turned up several replacements which
cost a few bucks but may improve on HP's mess. (My client decided to live with
the HP scanner limitations.) The other possibility would be to buy a fairly
expensive photo scanning program... Ben Myers

On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 09:19:10 -0600, erbug <> wrote:

>After a review in my PC Compter Mag. I went out and purchased the HP
>Scanjet 5530 which has the photo feeder on top. I was looking forward
>to it becuase my wife has been interested in archeiving her 1000's of
>photos. This was the perfect solution. Not so fast...
>
>The software and really the twain driver are really bad. First HP
>wnts you to open up the HP Director program to start from. That's
>easy enough. You can go into the preferences tab and set the
>directory for the pic's to be scaned into. A very odd thing happens
>when you go to the scan preferences and look at the "preview" tab.
>You have four options. The last overrides the first three. This is
>weird since you really only need a "yes" or "no" choice. And here is
>where the first big problem begins. The Director does not communicate
>your preferences for scanning to the HP Photo & Imaging program. More
>about that in a second. After you set everything the way you like,
>scanning a stack of 24 photos is simple. Just select "scan picture"
>and PRESTO! all 24 pic's scanned in under 5 min's. What happens next
>begins to be a desaster. In the HP Director you have no option of
>what program to dump your photos into. It automatically opens up HP
>Photo & Imaging and places them into your folder you chose when you
>went into setup in the Director. Once in the HP Photo & Imaging
>program things really turn weird. To begin with, the HP Director
>gives you no way to batch name the files; so you have 24 pictures that
>each have to be renamed individually unless you like the file names:
>"scan001", "scan002", etc. For reference, the HP Photo & Imaging
>program starts out in a "look alike" explorer type window. Trust me,
>it is anything but that. The right mouse button is useless. If you
>scanned a picture that doesn't fit your directory you created for them
>then don't bother creating another file to put them into. You have to
>leave the program and go into something like "explorer", creat the
>directory and thengo back into HP Photo & Imaging and select "refresh"
>from the "view" menu and then PRESTO! you can now see your new file.
>Don't bother using the old tried and true "draw a box around the
>files" you want to move trick. That isn't possible either. you
>either have to use the Shift to Shift or the control select method.
>That's more crap. Want to do the next batch of pictures? In the HP
>Photo & Imaging program there is a handy button that let's you scan
>from the Photo & Imaging program itself. Try it but beware. Remember
>that none of those preferences you set earlier in the HP Director
>never made it this far. And every pic that runs through the scanner
>"MUST" be previewed. Which totally defeats the purpose of the photo
>feeder. The only way to add more pic's is to go back to the Director
>and start all over again.
>
>Anyone know of any thrid party twian drivers that might help me. I'm
>stuck witha machine that wants to be great but can't becuase of the
>crap software that limits it.
>
>Oh, I've called HP three times and evrything I say here is correct.
>The affirmed the limitations of the software.
>
>Eric O.