Scanning direct to DEVONthink from scanner

I have a Kodak all-in-one scanner, which has the ability to send scans to the computer. There are settings in the Kodak software to chose the application which will be used for opening the scans, and the destination folder.

What should I chose to have scans sent directly to the DT inbox?

I am new to DT and keep reading how great Snapscans are with DT. My plan is to see how well the Kodak does before shelling out for a snapscan, but also interested to hear what the big plus is for the Snapscans.

Thanks

Two things…

  1. Scansnap does duplex scanning,
  2. It has a hopper that lets you put multiple pages in for scanning.

If you’ve used a flatbed scanner, after using a scansnap, you’ll never go back. For several years (a long time ago), I hesitated spending the cash for a scansnap when my HP flatbed did the work, but I finally went for it. (I know there are flatbeds with hoppers, but the duplex scanning is worth the cost of the scansnap.) the snapscan has worked beautifully for many years for scanning page documents. For thick paper or book pages, I’ll use my xerox then scan the output into DTPO. I rarely need to do that.

As I don’t have access to a Kodak scanner I’ll have to pass on that.

I bought a ScanSnap when the Mac-compatible model was first introduced, about 2005. It has seen pretty heavy duty since and is still going strong. During that time I’ve had two flatbed scanners die, and sometimes they were unusable after an OS X update pending a driver update (never a problem with the ScanSnap to DEVONthink Pro Office). I recently bought an iX500 ScanSnap and will give the old ScanSnap to a friend.

The ScanSnap is NOT for bound copy. It is strictly for unbound paper copy that can be inserted in the sheet feeder.

The ScanSnap is controlled by Fujitsu’s ScanSnap Manager software, which is easy to configure to send output to DEVONthink Pro Office for OCR. ScanSnap Manager controls the image resolution (300 dpi is recommended for OCR accuracy), can be set for black & white scans (which I use most of the time), for color scans or for automatic recognition of color in the paper copy.

I have ScanSnap Manager configured to automatically recognize duplex (2-sided) copy and to ignore blank pages. The ScanSnap moves paper copy along very quickly, and the optics produce clear and sharp images that result in very good OCR accuracy. I found that I can set DEVONthink Pro Office Preferences > OCR to save the searchable PDF at 130 dpi and 50% image quality for most scans, and the searchable PDFs have good view/print quality but are typically smaller than the original image size. (My flatbed scanners produced images that looked fuzzy at those settings).

In the past I used a flatbed scanner to copy bound copy such as books and journals. That was an experience that I dreaded, as it is sheer drudgery.

Nowadays I use digital camera images of bound copy, and will not replace my defunct flatbed scanner. While it is possible to do this with a handheld camera, a copy stand makes this a much faster process. I get good OCR accuracy from images taken with an iPhone 4S and the TurboScan app. Depending on the image quality I may pre-process the images in GraphicConverter before importing them into DEVONthink Pro Office for OCR.

Thanks for replies, very helpful.

Both of you have mentioned duplex scanning so I guess the Snapscan 1300 is preferred over the tiny and portable 1100.