# [SOLVED] Scanning quality issues: sane w/ Lexmark X1150

## stazz

I have a lexmark x1150 multifunction printer/scanner.  Printing works just fine.  Operating the scanner works, but the output is "unacceptable", I'll explain that more below. First:

Kernel: Gentoo 2.6.24-r4

I set up scanning as described in this how-to on gentoo-wiki: HOWTO Install a USB scanner

(note: backend is not specified in make.conf, I don't use hotplug or coldplug, hotplug support is enabled in kernel)

sane: 1.0.18

Scanner: Lexmark X1150 (SANE: Supported Devices lists this scanner with "good" status.  According to the legend, "good means the device is usable for day-to-day work. Some rather exotic features may be missing."

This computer was very recently converted from windows, where the scanner worked perfectly, so I don't expect any hardware-related issues.

Setting the scan resolution, scan area, etc, all appears to work properly in xsane.

Problems:

(I'm not a scanning/graphics expert, so I apologize if my terminology is off)

1.  I'm getting non-uniform intensity in the scanned image.  The left side of the image is brighter than the right side, and there seems to be a fairly even gradient between the two sides.

2.  Color images are tinted red.  It looks to me like the red level of the image has been cranked up a lot higher than the green and blue levels.  By using the "pick white point" and "pick black point" tools in xsane, the best I can do it make the white portion of a plain paper page of black text appear pink.

3.  Grayscale scanning has the wrong contrast (though it cannot be corrected with the brightness/contrast controls).  I believe this to be directly related to (2).  As I understand it, grayscale scanning is just color scanning converted to gray.

I have achieved my best (and only usable) results by doing 300dpi lineart scans with a threshold of exactly 47 in xsane (this is quite sensitive), and then inverting the image in gimp.  This technique produces acceptable images of B&W text documents, but the results are noticeably inferior to what I used to get by just pushing the "copy" button in windows without any fiddling.

Now, I don't think these results would warrant a "good" status on the sane status page, so I figure I have a problem somewhere.  I would guess there is a calibration issue, but I can't find  any info on calibrating this scanner.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated, since I have not found anything similar in my searches. Let me know if there is any additional info that would be helpful.  I will try to add some sample images that display the problem.Last edited by stazz on Thu Jun 05, 2008 6:00 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## frostschutz

What does 'sane-find-scanner' / 'scanimage -L' say? Make sure that you are using the correct backend for your scanner, and check wether you're using the latest version of it already.

If you're using the correct backends and even a basic 'scanimage > output' gives you weird gradients etc., you probably have to ask the devs of your backend if they know of a solution...

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## stazz

sane-find-scanners and scanimage -L were just fine, but I found out that there is a newer sane-backends, but it is still masked.  Unmasking and emerging solved all my problems.  I often use unstable when I hit problems, don't know why I never thought of that in this case...

Thanks for bumping me in the right direction!

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