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Hi NormanStanley,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

There's no scanning functionality in Affinity apps (for Windows) due to poor 64-bit scan driver support. For now we suggest that you use the software that comes with your scanner.

 

[EDIT] Sorry, i assumed you were referring to Windows. This is available on Affinity Photo for Mac as Lee D pointed out below.

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Hi NormanStanley,

If you're using Affinity Photo on macOS, use File > Acquire, it will use the built in feature of macOS.

 

@MEB also posted with regards to Affinity Photo for Windows, it doesn't have an acquire option. It's recommended to use the software that came with your scanner to scan your image and save. You can then use Affinity Photo to open the image to start editing.

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theres something in windows thats called 'twain' i think to get access to scanner etc. (couldnt find something like that in affinity - but might due to that i havent installed it...)

 

but honestly - as that didnt never worked quite well (at last for me) i never really used that option for years (if not ever). so for me it always was the far better and hassle-free way to scan with the software provided by the scanner. scan to your desired options within this, save the result in an appropriate folder and finally import it into your document. maybe a little bit more time-consuming and not the most comfortable way, but far more reliable, more predictable and no headaches ;) .

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Hi, do you have aktivated the scanner? That´s the first.

Then may be you see in >file >read image or something like that (Bild einlesen).

There you find the scanner...

It will work as the scanner can do I think.

 

regards

lars

all Aff 2.2: Capture One+ 23 pro; MacBook Pro, OSX 10.15.7,  Fuji X-Pro2 

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  • Staff

You can scan an image/sketch on Affinity Photo (for Mac only) going to menu File  Acquire Image... as Lee D explained.

Currently there's no scanning functionality integrated in Affinity Photo for Windows due to poor 64-bit scan driver support. You have to use the software provided with your scanner.

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You can scan an image/sketch on Affinity Photo (for Mac only) going to menu File  Acquire Image... as Lee D explained.

Currently there's no scanning functionality integrated in Affinity Photo for Windows due to poor 64-bit scan driver support.

Also, from what I can tell with my gear, Affinity does not support the TWAIN API on Macs if that is the only method the scanner software provides for accessing it (which may be true only for older scanners, or because of 32 bit related issues, or whatever).

 

I know this is possible because Graphic Converter 9 has a File menu > "Scan with TWAIN" option, which work even with my old scanner & its software that Canon quit issuing updates for around 5 or 6 years ago, but I don't know how much extra programming that would involve or if it would be worth the effort.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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  • 2 weeks later...

Various people have recommended VueScan, but I was concerned about transferring the scanned file to AP. However, having now installed VueScan, I find it works seamlessly. I set the default save format as jpeg, and it opens the scanned image automatically in AP.

 

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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  • 2 years later...

I would love to see "acquire from scanner" feature for Windows 10 - currently, I have to use my pdf software, acquire the image, and save to jpeg - then open in AP.  That would be great.  Still would have to keep my pdf software for forms and such.  But would love to see that feature added.  My 2 cents.

thx

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I have been exploring what other photo apps can do. I re-instated my old Corel PhotoPaint to try. This has an Acquire command for a Twain scanner, but this just calls up my  Vuescan program! Now why can't Affinity do this? (I have asked this question elsewhere and never got a satisfactory answer.)

BTW, Twain is supposed to stand for 'Technology Without An Interesting Name'. Believe that if you will.

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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19 minutes ago, John Rostron said:

I have been exploring what other photo apps can do. I re-instated my old Corel PhotoPaint to try. This has an Acquire command for a Twain scanner, but this just calls up my  Vuescan program! Now why can't Affinity do this? (I have asked this question elsewhere and never got a satisfactory answer.)

This apparently is a 32 bit vs. 64 bit issue, both for TWAIN & the scanner driver. According to the second reply here, you have to have the 64-bit TWAINDSM.DLL installed on your system and a native 64-bit TWAIN driver, plus the app (Affinity Photo in this instance) has to load TWAINDSM.DLL. There are a number of dead or redirected links in that reply, but regarding finding native drivers, https://resource.twain.org/twain-certified-drivers/ may help.

BTW, as you probably know, there is better support for scanners in the Mac version. However, Canon long ago quit issuing updated drivers that are compatible with current Mac OS versions for some of its older models like my MP620. Because (I think) the Mac version of Affinity Photo relies on OS level support for the "Acquire Image..." function, it won't work with the Canon drivers for that printer. A different app, the Mac-only GraphicConverter, has a "Scan with TWAIN" feature that does work with the MP620 TWAIN driver but it is somewhat flakey: it only provides partial support for the driver's features & sometimes hangs that app when I click the "Scan" button.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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27 minutes ago, R C-R said:

According to the second reply here, you have to have the 64-bit TWAINDSM.DLL installed on your system and a native 64-bit TWAIN driver, plus the app (Affinity Photo in this instance) has to load TWAINDSM.DLL.

That does not really help the end user. It would need the Affinity Photo developers to incorporate this. They have always insisted there is poor 64-bit support for scanners.

I still have not seen a satisfactory explanation as to why AP/Windows cannot ask the Operating System to execute a scanner program. 

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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1 minute ago, John Rostron said:

That does not really help the end user. It would need the Affinity Photo developers to incorporate this. They have always insisted there is poor 64-bit support for scanners.

Incorporate what, exactly? Even if the 64-bit TWAINDSM.DLL is installed on your system & they load the TWAINDSM.DLL to use it, you still need a Windows-compatible 64 bit scanner driver for it to work. Plus, from comments in the linked & other articles about 64 bit TWAIN support, it seems there are a lot of problems finding 64 bit TWAIN compatible drivers and/or getting any 64 bit ones to work with Windows.

Adobe also strongly suggests using stand alone scanning apps or a native OS scanning interface with Photoshop instead of its TWAIN plug-in to avoid "issues associated with TWAIN." Adobe also mentions in several different articles contacting the scanner manufacturer for help with getting suitable drivers or using a native OS scanning interface.

I have not done an exhaustive search but nothing I have been able to find contradicts Serif's claim that there is very poor 64 bit scanner support in Windows. Apparently, this is largely because Microsoft is not pushing scanner makers to supply the necessary 64 bit native Windows drivers. Without that push there are only a few of them available for a few specific scanner models. Another contributing factor is probably that the scanner makers think their stand alone apps are equal or superior to native OS interfaces, or they just don't want to spend any money developing 64 bit drivers.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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@R C-R, I have to agree with what you say. This still does not address my assertion that I still have not seen a satisfactory explanation as to why AP/Windows cannot ask the Operating System to execute a scanner program.

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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1 hour ago, John Rostron said:

This still does not address my assertion that I still have not seen a satisfactory explanation as to why AP/Windows cannot ask the Operating System to execute a scanner program.

Drivers supply the low level interfaces that allow an OS to operate ("drive") various kinds of hardware devices; thus the name. So as I understand it, 64 bit versions of the Windows OS cannot 'ask' the scanner to do anything unless the appropriate 64 bit native Windows drivers are installed -- without them the OS doesn't know what the scanner hardware is capable of or how to tell it to use those capabilities.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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16 hours ago, R C-R said:

Drivers supply the low level interfaces that allow an OS to operate ("drive") various kinds of hardware devices; thus the name. So as I understand it, 64 bit versions of the Windows OS cannot 'ask' the scanner to do anything unless the appropriate 64 bit native Windows drivers are installed -- without them the OS doesn't know what the scanner hardware is capable of or how to tell it to use those capabilities.

I am not asking for the OS to ask the scanner to do anything except load (say) VueScan or SilverFast. Not even to send an image to it (as Lightroom does when asked to 'Edit in Affinity Photo')

When VueScan has saved the tiff or jpg image, it will be automatically loaded into AP because I have told Windows that is the default program for this file type.

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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51 minutes ago, John Rostron said:

I am not asking for the OS to ask the scanner to do anything except load (say) VueScan or SilverFast.

Why can't you do that now by running the VueScan or SilverFast or whatever other stand alone scanning app you prefer, like Adobe recommends?

In the Mac version of Affinity Photo, scanning images is done via the File > Acquire Image... menu item, but like I mentioned earlier that requires a compatible 64 bit 'native' software driver for the scanner, which is supplied by the scanner maker. VueScan won't help with that -- it uses its own proprietary drivers -- so since Canon stopped making drivers for my old MP620 that are compatible with recent versions of the Mac OS, to use VueScan with it, just like you I would have to run the VueScan app & send its output to Affinity Photo.

Does this make more sense to you now? Basically, for either OS the issue is the lack of native 64 bit scanner drivers, which Affinity Photo requires to support scanning from within the app. That is much more of a problem for Windows than for Macs due to the poor 64 bit scanner driver support in Windows.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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  • 7 months later...
  • 1 year later...

years ago i downloaded the free version of affinity's photo plus x7. i have an A3 color laser konica minolta printer/scanner; it works great for me. i don't need anything better because it's just that good. as i liked the free version, i thought i couldn't fail with these smart brits so i bought the paid version. lo and behold, the paid version didn't include the TWAIN bit or something like that. i went back to the free version. now that shows that the affinity folks had an affinity for people not throwing around money.

but now that everything is supposedly so much better, how come i can't scan into photo, designer or publisher?

why didn't the smart folks at affinity respect their past achievements and accomplishments? could they just build that good stuff from way back into the new stuff? click file/import/acquire and you are done. if that's a problem why not go back to 32bit? can't be that bad since it works.

On 6/21/2019 at 9:32 AM, Simon C said:

It would be helpful to be able to use publisher as a replacement for acrobat pro. I would like to scan docs and pictures directly into files using Publisher. This will help with the final disentanglement with ADOBE regarding creating PDFs.

 

 

 

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16 hours ago, ECKART RAHN said:

if that's a problem why not go back to 32bit?

Because 'going back to 32 bit' would mean rewriting most of the Windows app from the ground up, & because there would be a huge performance hit if they did.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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