TWAIN Drivers
TWAIN is a standard used for regulating communication between imaging devices and software applications. For example, scanners and digital cameras have become popular peripherals over the years. Before TWAIN, developers created their own standards and protocols for interfacing between the device and the software. Because each developer had its own proprietary system for acquiring images, compatibility quickly became an issue.
In 1992, the TWAIN Initiative was launched to create a standard protocol and applications programming interface between the device (such as a scanner) and the software. Ever hear the saying "... and never the twain shall meet"? This phrase, taken from Kipling's The Ballad of East and West, reflected the perceived difficulty of connecting scanners and computers. Today, it's hard to imagine scanners and computers not working together. That's thanks to TWAIN. Now, just about any image processing software is TWAIN-compliant complete with an "acquire" command that allows the importing of images from any TWAIN device installed on the computer. Without TWAIN, in order to work with a scanned image, the user had to first scan the image and save it to disk. Next, the image processing software had to be launched and the file opened from within the software. Now that nearly all scanners and image processing applications are TWAIN compliant, the user simply uses the "acquire" command, selects the scanner, and begins. Everything works together seamlessly. Scanners and digital cameras are hardware devices that do require device drivers in order to work. Even if the device is TWAIN-compliant, if the device driver is missing or corrupt, the image processing software will not be able to work with it. TWAIN device drivers are usually available directly from the device manufacturer's website. In addition, the device should have come with an installation disc in which case the TWAIN drivers will be on the disc. » Download TWAIN Drivers |
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