.NET Scanning API [closed]

Answer 1

Microsoft have an API all about scanning. It's called Windows Image Acquisition and you can read a great Coding4Fun article about it by none other than Scott Hanselman here.

Answer 2

I just saw another Scanning question that referenced a 3rd party commercial product to add to the list: ImageMan

Looks like a single developer license starts at $325. I haven't used it personally, but is one of three or four products I'm evaluating.

Answer 3

The Accusoft Pegasus .NET component is called TwainPRO, and it's included in the ImagXpress SDK.

The ImageGear .NET toolkit from Accusoft Pegasus also includes a full-managed implementation of Twain.

Answer 4

Take a look at CodeProject: .NET TWAIN image scanning That might give you a good start.

Answer 5

+1 for Atalasoft

Technical quibble: You can avoid COM, but you can't avoid Interop: TWAIN is a native Win32 or Win64 DLL that is not part of Windows proper and is unknown to the CLR, so at the bottom, either in your code or the component you use, there are Interop calls to unmanaged code. Given what I know about TWAIN drivers, maybe I should say to very unmanaged code...

I've always had the impression that WIA was great for digital cameras, OK for consumer flatbeds, and not a serious contender for 'production scanning' - meaning something like full-speed multipage scans from a document feeder, under application control, using a USD400+ scanner. I've never heard of anybody doing production scanning through WIA, but I'd sure like to hear from somebody who's done this.

Answer 6

Disclaimer: I work for Atalasoft

Atalasoft has a product, DotTwain, which has no COM interop (just direct calls to the twain dll from .NET) and gives you a completely .NET interface. It can be embedded in a browser hosted WinForms control, for instance, because it doesn't use COM.