WIA / ICA / Sane Direct Scanning

WIA (Windows), ICA (Mac), & Sane Direct (Linux) are application interfaces or drivers included by the operating system that enables software to communicate with imaging hardware such as scanners and digital cameras. When scanning using one of these interfaces, Xodo PDF Studio will use our custom scanning dialog that will directly communicate with your scanners that support the WIA, ICA, or Sane Direct interface.

Scanning with WIA/ICA

  1. Go to File Tab > Create > From Scanner
  2. This will open the Scan to PDF options dialog
  3. Select the scanner and the setting you wish to use.
  4. Once you have selected all of your options click on either Preview or Scan
    • Preview - generates a quick preview using the scanning options that will be displayed on the right of the dialog
    • Scan - will use the selected options to scan and then create a new PDF or append the image to an existing PDF depending on the option selected.

WIA / ICA / Sane Direct Scan Settings

Scan to PDF Options

Profile - Allows you to add, edit, or delete scanning profiles

Scanner - The scanner to be used

Source - What scanning input to use when scanning the document/image (i.e. flat bed or feeder)

Duplex - If the scanner supports 2 sided scanning, select this option to scan both sides at the same time.

Color Format - Choose between Black and White, Grayscale, or Color when scanning

Note: If "(Conversion)" is listed next to the color option, then this option is not supported by your device. Xodo PDF Studio will convert the scanned image to the selected color space for you as a part of the scanning process.

Page Size - Size of the document being scanned

DPI Resolution - What resolution to use when saving the image into the PDF document. Select a predefined value between 50 - 600 or type in your own custom value up to 1200. When selecting a DPI it's best to follow the below guidelines

Black-and-white documents

    • Lowest acceptable resolution = 200 DPI (equal to “high” fax quality)
    • Conventional resolution = 300 DPI
    • Highest conventional resolution = 600 DPI

Color documents (and color compression)

    • Lowest acceptable resolution = 150 DPI
    • Conventional resolution = 200 DPI
    • Highest conventional resolution = 300 DPI
    • Archive resolution = 600 DPI

Scan more pages: Sets the behavior after the scanning is completed

  • Disabled: will not prompt to continue scanning
  • Ask user: Prompts after completing the page scan to continue scanning additional pages
  • Automatically after: waits the specified time before automatically starting another scan

Brightness - Adjusts the brightness of the scanned document. Increase the value to make the document/image look lighter

Contrast - Adjusts the contrast of the scanned document. This affects the differences between light and dark on the document/image

PDF Options

Insert At - Where to insert the new image. Choose from the following options:

  • Beginning Of Document: Inserts the scanned pages before the first page of the currently opened document
  • Current Location: Inserts the scanned pages in front of the current page being displayed of the currently opened document
  • End Of Document: Appends the scan at the end of the document.
  • New Document: Creates a new document using only the scanned pages
  • Interleave – When scanning multiple images, this option can be used to insert them at every other page.  This is especially useful for scanning two-sided documents.
  • Reverse Interleave: Insert the scan in the current document at every other page in reverse order starting after the last page of the document.
  • Multiple documents -  Use this option to create multiple documents when scanning multiple pages. When selected a dialog will be displayed to set the following options.
    • Pages per PDF - Number of pages before creating the next PDF
    • File Name Pattern - The file name to be used when creating the PDFs. Each file will have the number of the document appended to the end of the file name
    • Save files To - Where to save the created files
    • Save as Default - When checked this will make the selected options the default going forward

Page Size - What size to use when creating a new page to hold the image.

  • Size to Image – The new page will be created the same size as the scanned image.
  • Same as Document – The new page will be created the same size as the current open document. If the document is empty or if the Insert At choice is set to New Document the new page will be created at the same size as the scanned image.

Compression - What compression to use when saving the image into the PDF document.

  • JPEG - Lossy compression (recommended compression)
    • Quality (for JPEG compression only) – If using JPEG, the compression quality can be adjusted from 1 to 100%.
      • 1 =  high compression, very low quality
      • 100 = low compression, very high quality
      • Generally, 80=high quality, 50=medium quality, 20=low quality
  • Flate - Lossless compression format
  • JBIG2 B&W -  Lossless compression format that only supports B&W color

Auto deskew images - When checked, if the document’s text/images are slanting too far in one direction or is misaligned, Xodo PDF Studio will attempt to auto-rotate the document so that the alignment is corrected.

OCR Options

OCR - Create Searchable PDF - Check this to automatically OCR the document after scanning

Language - Language to be used if OCR is selected. Click on "Download OCR Languages" to download additional languages.

Rotate Pages - Auto rotates any scanned pages so that the text is oriented in the correct direction