scanning makes page huge
 

Hello. When I try to scan a regular 8 by 11 inch page (US letter) the resultant file is usually around 35 by 48 inches. Anyone know why this is? And how I can fix it? Why is the scanned image so much larger than the actual page?

It doesn't matter if I use xsane, gscan2pdf, or Simple Scan. My scanner is an HP Scanjet 6200C.

The concern is when I fax a pdf created from a scanned page (via efax-gtk), the recipient usually complains that the size is not recognized.

It depends on the dpi that you use to scan it. DPI is dots (pixels) per inch. What resolution does the image have in pixels ? You can scale it down or change the scan settings to a lower DPI. 300 DPI is plenty for text.

Yes, I start it at 300 dpi (gscan2pdf). It starts, scans, the image momentarily looks fine (IE, resembles the page scanned), then there's a blink, and the image has a larger border. Sometimes it reads 72 dpi under the properties tab (why, I don't know). I zoom it to 100%, and notice that the image is huge.

I used to use gscan2pdf within Vector Linux, and did not have this problem.

With xsane or simple scanner, I get the same (a huge image) even though the resolution is set at 300 dpi.

Set the DPI lower or scale the image using GIMP or equivalent.

I've tried with gimp. When using gimp, I noticed some interesting things. Even though the image had been set to 300 dpi for the initial scan via one of the frontends (gscan2pdf, xsane, or simple scanner) gimp would still report it as being set to 72. When the image would be changed back to 300 dpi, then the image retained its normal 8 by 11 dimensions. See uploaded screenshots.

300 / 72 = 4.166666667

35.417 / 8.5 = 4.166705882

48.708 / 11.690 = 4.166638152

I've taken the difference between the resolutions and divided them. And, I've taken the difference between the image measurements (both width and length, IE, 8.5 by 11.69 compared to 35.417 by 48.708) and divided the difference, and noted that the numbers are very similar (and likely would be almost identical if millimetres rather than inches had been used.)

There seems to be some glitch somewhere, because it doesn't matter if I set the scanning software to 300 to start.

Anyway, even after having rescaled things with gimp, it still concerns me to fax these images. The still appear huge on my screen. So I worry that there would be dozens of pages printed from some recipient fax machine trying to make sense of the oddity that it's receiving.

I tried gscan2pdf starting with a resolution of 72 (using line art setting) and the image size was reasonable. But the image itself looks like crap.

In what format do you fax these images ? A most specific error would help. Maybe the fax program has issues.

pdf. I use efax-gtk 3.2.8. I've normally been successful sending faxes, but I discovered today that one did not go through that I tried to send last night. efax-gtk gave a bunch of odd errors. I just recently reinstalled my system onto a new computer. So, I'm a bit worried.

See the log below. I sent two pdf files, one with two pages, and the other with one page (so three altogether). It seemed to sort of get through, but then it spewed a bunch of errors that I've not seen before. The recipient did receive some faxes from me, but I was told it was indecipherable and wrongly sized.

That scanner does not score very well on TWAIN standards compatibility. Only 33 out of 100.

http://inspectortwain.com/report.asp...1-b2729c4a7827

Some things to try:
Use the latest version of efax-gtk and double-check the settings. Try exporting to PDF or PS using xsane directly.

efax is kinda old, so you may want to try something that is constantly updated like:
http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/

I don't think efax-gtk is the problem. I've compared documents that I scanned a month ago (using the same scanner), and when viewed at 100% they render fine. All were done with 300 dpi. The recent documents are rendered huge. Something is different with the rendering of scanned documents.

The problem is described here with gscan2pdf. No solution here, however.

So do they render huge from the start, right after scanning ? Can you run 'identify --verbose' on the images like it says here:
http://www.imagemagick.org/script/identify.php
You should be able to see more info on them. It says you can get the print size like:
Again check the settings of all the programs you use as maybe one of the DPI settings is off.

EDIT: if the problem is gscan2pdf try other programs:
http://scantailor.sourceforge.net/

Okay, I guess it's just gscan2pdf and xsane that aren't working. simple-scan did work, which is good. Since I can scan stuff, presumably I'll be able to fax stuff as well. So, that saves me a reinstall. Still, too bad because I like the program gscan2pdf. It's handier than simple-scan.

With a file created by simple-scan:

I submitted a bug. I also tried a newer version of the program (1.2.4) via entering a repository from the gscan2pdf website, but this made no difference.

I'm not sure why simple-scan initially gave me odd results. Perhaps because I had it set on photo setting for a text-based page. It was fine after I changed this. So, with simple-scan, I can still make reasonably sized scans, which is good.