How do I scan multiple pages of a document into a single PDF?
The new Snow Leopard system that without separate printer drivers seems to have eliminated an option I used all the time, which was to scan the multiple pages of a document into a single PDF. Is there some to do this?
Try the "Image Capture" program in you applications folder. If you select Scan Mode "Document Feeder" you'll have the option to pick "Create single document".
Click on your device on the left under "shared". Then wait for the scanner to warm up and they will appear on the right. You might have to hit the "show details" at the bottom of the screen if they are hidden.
A lot of these options depend on the scanner that you are using and its software. Image Capture, Preview, and other applications like that are just front ends for the scanner software.
In my experience with Image Capture, Mode or Scan Mode only shows the features available with the particular scanner. Preview exhibits the same behavior because it uses Image Capture to capture from scanners. Bottom line - the OP would need to actually have a document feeder on his scanner for the Document Feeder option to appear in Image Capture.
Vuescan does a nice job creating multi-page PDF files from individually scanned sheets. I do it all the time.
Supposedly the driver for your model is built into Snow Leopard. However, HP does have a Snow Leopard driver for the Officejet j4550 that includes the driver, utility & scan software. Go to the Support & Drivers section of the HP website.
What version of Vuescan do you have? I'm using v8.6.47 and it works fine on Snow Leopard. The current version is v8.6.58 - if you have anything prior to 8.6.0 you should update it. There have been a lot of HP updates across the 8.6.x versions.
I just got a new Canon all-in-one and have been fooling around with it. I know you have an HP yourself. At first I was hesitant to install all the Canon software but finally gave in and did it. It seems the options for scanning, etc. are somewhat complicated on my particular all-in-one, but they are there. You can either open menus to scan from the device directly, or to open control panels and do it from your Mac or do it in one step or do it with options to choose settings. I've been wading through it just trying to see what all it can do.
Bottom line is that I can use my Canon software to scan in multiple images or pages and then choose to save them to one PDF. I can either initially scan them in as JPEGs and then save as a multipage PDF or I can scan them directly into a multipage PDF. Kind of neat. There's a good chance you could do this too with the HP software. But you'll probably have to install or reinstall the whole HP suite of drivers.
To be clear, the fact that you can scan directly into an application usually means that the application uses the driver that comes from the manufacturer to scan, and the result appears in the application. So whether you scan into Preview, Image Capture, or use the manufacturer's scanning application, the scan is the same. The difference in how you can save the scan is in the application, not in the driver. So there is no reason not to at least try the manufacturer's scanning application.
There are a few applications that provide alternate drivers, including VueScan, although it does not provide the drivers for all scanners. With those applications, you may get different scanning results than with the manufacturer's driver.
OK< I am now moving backward fast. I was able to scan, just not multiple pages into a single PDF. At the suggestion of someone above, I installed the HP driver for OS 10.6. Now I cannot scan at all, as none of the scan options, not image capture, not preview, not HP scan, not the preference panel, will now recognize that there is any scanner connected at all. Now what?
Had you ever previously used the HP software, either successfully or not? Have you done the other usual preliminary trouble shooting steps such as rebooting and repairing permissions using Disk Utility?
Does the HP software come with an uninstall option? You might have to research this also on HP's site for options to uninstall.
