CmdTwain FAQs

Does It Work With Windows?

Of course. Click the shortcut on the desktop and start scanning.

Is It Really Free?

Yes. You don’t have to buy it. You don’t have to enter an unlock code. It doesn’t stop working after 30 days. It doesn’t pop up advertisements. And it doesn’t scribble anything over your scans.

Some other download sites (elsewhere) may charge a small fee to help cover their costs. Where that is the case, your contribution helps a worthwhile industry to provide more software for everyone. Thank you on behalf of those sites.

Can I Sell It?

Yes.

Can I Give It Away?

Yes.

Can I Include It With A Saleable Product

Yes.

Will It Work For Me?

Probably. As with all software, you need to determine its suitability for your purpose. I can’t guarantee it will do exactly what you want and/or that it will work for everyone. I wish I could but life’s not like that. If you have trouble with the program you can always email me. Maybe I can get you going. Maybe I can change something to add a feature.

It Scans From The Wrong Device!

I first heard of this from someone who was getting lovely photos of his increasingly frustrated face from his webcam. CmdTwain uses the current default TWAIN device. In his case, that was his webcam.

He solved that by using the excellent IrfanView program and using "File" / "Select TWAIN source".

If you don’t have IrfanView you can use

CmdTwain.exe /source

That will pop up the TWAIN Device selection window and let you choose your scanner.

Does It Run On Windows 8?

Probably. I’m running it on Windows 8.1.

Does It Support Automatic Document Feeders?

Yes. You may need to add one or more of the /ADF /AS /AF options (see the help) page.

Does It Do PDFs?

As of version 2.11, yes.

How do I get Paper Size to work?

If the usual options aren’t working for you, see the paper size article.

How Do I Stop The "Couldn’t scan image" Messages?

As of CmdTwain 2.13 and later, use -q on the command line.

This only affects some scanners. The scanner should indicate that it has completed all of the pages that it has to scan. That causes CmdTwain to wrap up and exit the scan loop.

However, some scanners indicate that they are done by failing to scan the next page. This really messes up the sorts of fully automated processes that CmdTwain is great for.

If you have one of those scanners, check the scanner manufacturer’s website for updated drivers. Some have fixed their drivers. If that doesn’t cover your case, the solution is to use "quiet mode". All it really does is turn off the display of some messages so that you don’t need to click Ok, and processing can continue unattended.

Easy to use software

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