CmdTwain 2.13

Overview

Scanning documents and papers is sometimes an irritating process, since you need to make a few adjustments in the scanner’s software before you start the operation, which hopefully will obey your commands without problems. Fortunately though, there’s a short route to scanning documents that requires nothing more than a few command line arguments, and it’s called CmdTwain. This handy little program lets you scan documents from the command line fast and easy.

Installation

The installation will finish in a breeze without asking you to make any weird settings whatsoever.

No unwanted items are included in the setup package, like viruses, spyware (malware in general) or extra 3^rd party software (e.g. toolbars) - see report.

Supported operating systems are Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8.

Interface

No interface here, and that’s the whole point of the program. In fact, the only window you’ll see is the one that asks you to select a source (the scanner you want to use). Double-clicking on CmdTwain.exe will open up a message with information on how to use the program with command line arguments. So all you have to do basically is load the document in the source, open a command-line window, enter the necessary arguments and press enter. The document will be saved then in the directory you specified as a JPG or BMP file (depending on the input arguments).

Pros

You don’t have to be an expert to use the program, as long as you have a little bit of experience with command line arguments. What you can do with CmdTwain is specify paper type (A4, LETTER, LEGAL, A3, A5, A6, B3, B4, B5, B6, C4, C5, C6), mode (RGB, GRAY, B/W), dots per inch (DPI) and format (/BMP /JPG[25|50|75|100]). Then you just have to select an output directory and the source scanner (if you didn’t select it using the “Select Source” executable from the Start Menu), and the document that is loaded in the scanner will be automatically scanned.

If you don’t want to mess with command line arguments, you can use the two shortcuts from the Start Menu (Scan to Desktop, Scan to Documents) which scan documents using the default values for paper, mode, DPI and format (which are A4, RGB, 200 and JPG75 respectively). The only difference between the two shortcuts lies in the destination folder- the first shortcut saves the scanned document to the Desktop, and the second one saves it to the Documents folder.

The deeper purpose of this program is to integrate it into other software so that users can easily scan documents without the use of a 3^rd party application.

Cons

The only thing that could be considered as con is that only uppercase letters are allowed when typing options. But the developer is aware of this issue and future versions won’t have this little bug.

Alternatives

Softi Scan to PDF (paid) is a software that can scan documents and save them as PDF, and the same goes for WinScan2PDF (free) and ScanToPDF (paid). VueScan (paid) is a software with more capabilities that can scan documents and save them as PDF, JPEG, TIFF and TXT files.

Conclusion

Awesome product that will save you a lot of time, money and effort.