Scanning documents with old Pixma MG6250 on MacBook Air M4

It appears that your best bet is Vuescan. It works directly with your MG6250, not needing any drivers. If you don't want the one-time purchase, you can do a subscription, currently about €29/year. But if you expect to continue using a scanner in the future, the OTP is a better purchase. Vuescan works with hundreds of scanners, old & new.

I purchased Vuescan many years ago and it has been one of the best purchases I ever made. I bought the Professional Edition at a time that it included lifetime support but Vuescan is so productive for me that I am now voluntarily making an annual contribution to their Vuescan Supporter Program. Ed & Dave Hamrick do an outstanding job of maintaining Vuescan and adding new features on a regular basis.

Even if you buy a new scanner, Vuescan stands head & shoulders above the scanning apps that come with the scanners. Although some high-end scanners are bundled with a scaled-down version of Silverfast but those are not €80–90 scanners.

Note: My recommendation is solely as a user of the app. I do not receive any payment or other consideration for suggesting or even recommending Vuescan.

You could try seeing if you can scan using Image Capture.

There is a paid third-party application called VueScan which appears to have reverse-engineered drivers for your Canon Pixma MG6250 . I have a different Canon all-in-one printer for which Canon stopped providing drivers, and I'm using a combination of AirPrint (for printing) and VueScan (for scanning) to keep it going.

I am using an MG2520 with an iMac M4, running Tahoe 26.3. I am using Canon MG2500 series software - Canon IJ Scan Utility2 - and have it connected to the iMac via a USB/printer cable. I remember that the printer stopped working when I upgraded to the M4 but I kept experimenting with software versions at the Canon site from the newest to older versions until this one worked (screen capture, not downloadable files).

I don't know how helpful this is to you in your specific situation but I wanted you to know that it does work perfectly for me.

Vio76 wrote:

On the professional machines at the office, I can scan very sharp PDFs in a small file size (thanks to a “compressed PDF” option). Will this kind of option be possible with VueScan, even though the scanner in my PIXMA is fairly basic to begin with? I mean: is this kind of feature typically dependent on the software rather than the hardware?

Yes, Vuescan has a PDF output setting called PDF Size Reduction that does what your "compressed PDF" option does. Additional ways to control output file size include setting the scan resolution and the media type (Color, Grey, Color text, B/W text).

For general purpose document scanning I find it best to scan to B/W text. It minimizes the file size. If you want color document scans the Color text option works great. The "Color" and "Grey" options are best for scanning photographs and will produce larger file sizes.

Another thing that Vuescan can do is "descreening" which smooths printed images from newspapers, magazines and books.

And one last question… If my Canon still works with an old Mac (via another open‑source driver), using it with VueScan on my new Mac won’t break their connection, right?

It will have no effect. You can use both Macs.

Vio76 wrote:

Does anyone know NAPS2 ?

It's non-commercial freeware. When you use it you accept the risks associated with freeware.