Photocopier for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP version 2.31 (c) 2004, Nico Cuppen INTRODUCTION Got a scanner and a printer? Why not combine those two into a copy machine? Photocopier helps you: just put a document on your scanner's glass, start Photocopier and press its Copy button. After a few moments your printer produces a copy of the document. Photocopier takes the hassle out of scanning. No difficult settings to make, very user friendly. Best of all: Photocopier is free!! REQUIREMENTS . A Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP system. . A scanner that complies with the Twain standard (most scanners do). . A printer installed in Windows. Photocopier derives the area to scan from the dimensions of the page, defined for your default Windows printer. It's no use to scan areas you can't bring on paper, is it? Therefore: you MUST have defined a printer in Windows, and you only get copies with correct dimensions if the correct page size is set for that printer. INSTALLATION Before installing this version first uninstall a previous version. To install just run the downloaded EXE-file. HOW TO... There's little to be said about how to use this program, because it's so very simple. If you ever used a photocopy machine (bet you have) you know how to use Photocopier. ABOUT PHOTOCOPIER PRO You should know that there is also a shareware version of Photocopier, called Photocopier Pro. Photocopier Pro offers these features over the basic version: . It can associate itself with your scanner's Copy button, so you can sit at your scanner and make copies just by pressing that button. . You can get a preview of the scanned image before printing starts. From the preview window you can manipulate (invert, mirror) the scanned image. . Greater control over scan resolution. . Auto crop function, to remove superfluous parts of the scanned image. . You can select the imaging device to use. Convenient when you have both a scanner and a video camera attached to your system. . You can instruct Photocopier to pause before printing starts. Convenient when you have scanner and printer attached to your system via a switch box. Or when you want to send the copy to your fax printer driver! Go to www.nicocuppen.com for more info on Photocopier Pro. ABOUT SCAN SPEED AND MEMORY CONSUMPTION You can scan in black and white, in gray scales or in color. Scanning in black and white is fastest and produces the smallest internal image files. Scanning in color is slow and produces large image files. Therefore Photocopier reduces the scanning resolution when you choose to scan in gray scales or color, to cut scanning time and memory needs. Resulting copies, however, will be somewhat less sharp. You can cut down the size of the scanned document to 70 % of its original width and height. The resulting printed image will occupy about half the space of the original. BRIGHTNESS You can adjust brightness in 7 steps. However, for some scanners this has no effect, because these scanners automatically adjust brightness. NUMBER OF COPIES You can print any number (between 1 and 99) of the scanned image. USE OF AUTOMATIC DOCUMENT FEEDER If you enabled your scanner's Automatic Document Feeder (ADF), Photocopier will automatically make use of it. All documents in the ADF will be scanned and printed. IMAGE RATIO Most printers can't print a small edge of the full page. I suppose their paper transport mechanism is in the way. Photocopier only scans that part of the page that your printer can print. This has the advantage that the image ratio of the print will be equal to that of the original, but the disadvantage is that you'll lose the small edge. Funny thing is, real photocopy machines normally don't have this short- coming. They do have a paper transport mechanism I suppose, but their developers managed to overcome this problem. If anyone knows how they've done that, while printer manufacturers haven't, please let me know. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Question: Photocopier tries to scan from my digital camera! How can I point it to my scanner? Answer: Photopier uses the default imaging device on your system. The default device is the device last selected in the TWAIN "Select Source" dialog box. Photocopier doesn't show that box, because I wanted to make the program as easy to use as possible for the average scanner user (who will have only one imaging device). What you could do is select the device, that you want to use in Photocopier, by starting another application that lets you select it, like Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photo Shop. Just select it and then quit that application. That's enough. Photocopier Pro, the shareware version of Photocopier, has a button in its Settings window that lets you switch to another imaging device. Question: I have a scanner and a printer both connected to the parallel post, using a switch box. How can I let Photocopier pause so that I can switch from scanner to printer? Answer: Before starting Photocopier to scan the document, go to your printer's icon, right click on it and toggle on "Pause Printing". Create an icon for the printer on your desktop to make this easier, but it can also be reached from Start/Settings/Printers. Once the printer is paused, let Photocopier scan the document. After the document is scanned, right click the printer icon and toggle off the "Pause Printing" and your printer will print the copy. Photocopier Pro, the shareware version of Photocopier, can be instructed to pause after scanning and before printing starts. Question: When I copy a small document or photograph Photocopier print all black on the rest of the page. Why? Answer: Photocopier is like a real photocopy machine: it copies a full page. And since the inner side of your scanner's cover is black it copies this black too. A simple remedy: put a white sheet of paper over the photograh you scan. Photocopier Pro, the shareware version of Photocopier, has an "auto crop" function that automatically crops the black edges. Question: Can I use Photocopier to fax? Answer: Yes, but of course you need to have a fax printer driver installed. Make that your default printer in Windows: go to Settings, Printers, right click the fax printer driver, and make sure Set as default is checked. Then start Photocopier and press the Copy button. The output will be send to the fax printer driver. By the way: FAX MACHINE, another shareware application from the same author, makes faxing a breeze! More info on http://www.nicocuppen.com. IN CASE OF PROBLEMS Still not getting the copy you expected? No copy at all? Before asking me for help read this: You may have noticed that Photocopier instructs the scanner driver software to NOT show the driver's user interface, which is what you normally see when scanning. Photocopier instructs the driver to bypass it because this is what makes scanning often such a daunting task: all those difficult settings to choose from. However, not all scanner drivers like it to be instructed like this, although it's perfectly legal in TWAIN terms, and sometimes they react in strange ways. Some deliver black scans, some end in a Windows General Protection Fault, and some don't scan at all. Don't blame me for this, blame the scanner driver developer for not following the TWAIN standard. Anyhow: ======================================================================== -- YOU SHOULD HAVE THE MOST RECENT DRIVER SOFTWARE FOR YOUR SCANNER!! -- ======================================================================== Check on the site of your scanners manufacturer for new version of the drivers. Look for TWAIN-compatible drivers. Still having problems? You can help me diagnose the problem by making a log file of Photocopier's actions and settings and mailing that to me, together with a description of what went wrong. This is how you make the log file: - Right click on the Photocopier shortcut on your desktop. - Choose Properties from the pop up menu. - Choose the Shortcut tab. - In the edit box labeled Target you'll see the path to Photocopier, ending with ...\COPIER.EXE". Add a space and the word LOG after the double quote. Press OK. - Now start Photocopier again and make a photocopy. - Shut down Photocopier and look in the root directory of drive C: for a file called PHOTOCOPIER.LOG. That's the one. And this is the e-mail address to send it to: info@nicocuppen.com. Don't forget to add a description of what goes wrong! GETTING NEGATIVE COPIES FROM YOUR SCANNER Some TWAIN-accessed scanners (in fact: drivers) produce "negative" or "inverted" images: dark pixels on the original are bright on the copy and bright parts in the original show up dark on the copy. In color mode some colors seem to be missing. In this case, you have to edit the file WIN.INI in your Windows folder. Search for the section [Twain] or [TWAIN] and add one or more of these lines: invertBW = 1 invertGray = 1 invertColor = 1 Insert the first line if you get negative copies when scanning in black and white. Insert the second line if you get negative copies when scanning in gray scales. Insert the third line if you get negative copies when scanning in color. Insert any combination as appropriate. After insertion the WIN.INI section COULD look like this: [Twain] invertBW = 1 insertRGB = 1 This modification only effects Photocopier, not other TWAIN-enabled software. AND THEN... Have fun with this program. If you have a question, suggestion or bug to report: send mail to info@nicocuppen.com. Check http://www.nicocuppen.com for new versions of Photocopier and for other exciting products.