Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today I am technically ready to start my first batch of scanning photos. Let’s get started!
Early Start
I am tired of this project going seemingly forever. Whatever I’m getting done, I want working this week. My plan has been to scan directly into the DivideScannedImages script for GIMP, and for that I need the XSANE plugin (Scanner Access Now Easy for Xorg GUI server). Every version I found was ancient and obsolete. Turns out installing the plain XSANE included its own GIMP plugin, as confirmed by xsane -v and looking for a line about GIMP. Just know that if you’re trying to check the version over SSH, that it really wants an Xorg server: export DISPLAY=’:0′ worked for me.
GIMP has a powerful scripting language built in. With it, you can automate most anything, all be it with a little difficulty. You can even use it to script events when launching GIMP with the -b flag (b as in batch). I took a look at it. It doesn’t look that bad to learn. It’s heavy on the parentheses, but I’d hesitate to directly call it LISP.
I got as far as calling the XSANE plugin on boot from within the DivideScannedImmages script. I was a little short on time to struggle through getting it just right, so I reached out for help on a GIMP Discord, but then I began to reconsider everything.
Progress Rejected
I’ve been a bad programmer. So many dead ends. So many side projects distracting from the main goal. I have an unknown deadline for this project, and I really need to cut the fancy stuff I’ve been working on and do something that actually works.
I also got to thinking, Who am I designing this for? I had been working on a command line setup for me, and my mother has graciously offered to help with scanning a little bit at a time. She doesn’t do the command line outside Minecraft. As a good programmer, I need to consider my end user’s needs, and she needs a graphical workspace.
Thinking like my mother would think, I made a directory on my desktop for shortcuts related to this project. So far, I’ve made launchers for XSANE, the network share for the pictures, and GIMP. I may develop it later.
My new vision is to just use the tools I have: XSANE to scan and save locally and GIMP to separate and deskew pictures automatically and store them in the digital archive before someone either deletes or offloads the original scans. I can make a text file with miscellaneous metadata for each batch. A manual review can flag photos that will need additional touchup.
Testing the Workflow
I used a couple pictures from when I was little to test my workflow. I laid them on the scanner with a bit of tweak. I spent several attempts learning about the limits of the scanner. The scan head doesn’t actually reach the full scan bed. If I’m not careful, pictures will get pinched under the edges. It’s very easy to accidentally overlap pictures. All good reasons for finding a preview of each scan.
Deskew isn’t a miracle, but when I did a side-by side comparison on a sample size of my two test pictures, it got one almost perfect and reduced the the tweak from the other, but my sister said the deskewed one might be a little fuzzier.
Takeaway
I cannot emphasize this point enough: good programmers build software for end users. It’s fine to hack together a piece of software you understand, but if you want to share your creation with someone else, you’ve got to make a relatable front end.
Final Question
What elements of a project have you given up for the sake of an end-user?