TWAIN Drivers on Mac

Question

I'm primarily a Windows admin, but I just got a new MacBook Air with Lion on it. I'm trying to use it with my Brother MFC-7820N printer/scanner/fax device.

I've installed drivers, and am able to both print and scan, BUT not via TWAIN (applications such as Image Capture and Preview do not show the scanner as a valid source for importing documents).

I've downloaded the TWAIN driver. It says it installs, but doesn't prompt me to do anything (like enter the IP address of my scanner) after installing. Arrgh.

Being so new to Lion, and somewhat new to Mac OS (relative to my 15 years as a Windows admin), I'd love some advice on how TWAIN works on Mac OS. I'd also love to know some of the popular newsgroups or places to submit this question.

Answer 1

Hamrick VueScan

This is a "Swiss-Army-knife" scanning application that supports hundreds and hundreds of makes and models of scanners, even many obsolete ones which don't have direct Mac OS X support.

Download and evaluate the trial version.

I use it with my Brother MFC-6490CW, which does have Mac OS X drivers, but I'd rather use VueScan than use the Brother or Apple scanning software. Although VueScan has TWAIN support, I use it as a stand-alone scanning solution to output PDF, TIFF and JPEG.

Answer 2

There's also the "TWAIN SANE Interface - SCSI, USB scanner drivers, pref panes, libraries".

http://www.ellert.se/twain-sane/

http://osx.hyperjeff.net/Apps/apps?f=twain

Answer 3

Two good sources are always the community discussions at Apple Support and the Apple Support site itself. You said you downloaded the latest drivers from your scanner provider's website. However, since Lion has been out only for a few days; you may want to verify that the drivers are for Lion (10.7) and not a prior version. If they are not Lion-specific drivers, you may want to post a question into your scanner provider's support website to find out if Lion-specific drivers are coming.

I am also a "switcher" from many years in the Windows world. I've been a Mac user for seven years now and drivers haven't been an issue as much as it was with Windows for me. Hardware makers are much better about keeping up with Mac OS X than before as far as drivers. However, there are still some vendors out there that just don't.

As a reference, this article shows how TWAIN support required upgrades from your vendor when Mac OS X went into version 10.2. So, it wouldn't be unheard of if some TWAIN scanners stopped working now that we're on 10.7.

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

I have the same Brother printer and could print to it but couldn't scan at first. On OS X 10.11, I went to the Brother support website for the MFC-7820N and downloaded the "Scanner Driver" for 10.10 (the latest os supported version listed). After installing that driver, Image Capture found the scanner.

I also had to delete and re-add the printer entry in the System Preferences. The old entry was setup as a printer only, and when re-added showed print|scan as options.