AV News 183 - February 2011
Note: a word of caution, it's important not to use Photoshop CS4 downloads,
you must always use downloads specific to Photoshop CS5. Also note that
64-bit TWAIN scanners are not officially supported in either 64-bit or 32-bit
Photoshop. Use these at your own risk, although Adobe has found that the
Canon PIXMA MP990 (64-bit) works well on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions
for Mac OS 10.6. If you need to use a 64-bit TWAIN scanner on a Mac then
Adobe recommend that you use this scanner and upgrade to Mac OS 10.6.
To install the legacy TWAIN plug-in for Macintosh computers, drop the
///Optional plug-Ins/TWAINplug-in into the //Adobe Photoshop
CS5/Plug-ins/Import-Export folder. The file entitled 'ReadMeCS5_Optional
Plugin.PDF' really contains all the necessary information regarding what is
included in your download and how to install each of the legacy items.
Upon completion of this
process,
CS5
will
recognise such equipment
and thereby allow direct
scanning into Photoshop
using
the
import
command.
So you may ask is TWAIN an acronym and if so what is it an acronym of?
According to official releases of TWAIN information the word TWAIN
originates from Kipling's 'The Ballad of East and West' - 'and never the twain
shall meet', reflecting the difficulty, of those early times of connecting
scanners and personal computers in such manner that they could correctly
talk to each other. Something that nowadays we take for granted, unless
you've just upgraded to CS5! This word 'twain' was later up-cased to TWAIN
to make it more distinctive. This up-casing misled people to believe that it was
an acronym from computer jargon and this in turn led to a contest to come up
with an expansion. None of the entries was officially selected. However the
entry describing TWAIN as 'Technology Without An Interesting Name' stuck
and unfortunately it continues to haunt both the standard and the Working
Group to this day.
It should be noted that the TWAIN Working Group does not maintain any
specific scanner or digital camera drivers. You need to obtain the drivers for
your devices from the scanner or digital camera vendor; these are usually
provided on CD along with other pieces of software supplied when
purchasing new equipment. If your scanner drivers were installed prior to
CS5 then when you complete the simple pasting procedure described above
your scanner will be recognised without re-installing any drivers. Most
vendors including Nikon and Epson make available a back catalogue of
drivers for older equipment at no charge from their official Websites, although
with Nikon you are required to be a registered Nikon equipment owner to
access the driver download section of their website.
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