Auto-feed scanner options to purchase for Harmony 14/15?

Hi there, I run an animation co-op and we are just getting onto Harmony at our studios! Very excited. We do a lot of hand-drawn 2D animation, and I want to use Toon Boom as a capture tool to scan the linework into the computer.

I’m looking to purchase a good scanner with an auto-feed that will be compatible with Harmony, with minimal tweaking / installing of TWAIN drivers. The Harmony support lists the following units as compatible, but only a few of these are still being manufactured or sold:

Epson_836XL

Epson_1640XL

Epson_GT-15000

Fujitsu_M3096G

Fujitsu_M4097D

Fujitsu_fi4750C

Fujitsu_fi5750C

Fujitsu_fi6770

Ricoh_IS330

Ricoh_IS420

Ricoh_IS430

Ricoh_IS450

Ricoh_IS760

TWAIN

My question: what is a good production-grade, Harmony compatible scanner that can do batch processing / auto-feed? Something like the Epson GT-15000 or the Fujitsu FI6770 is what I’m looking at. We are running on OSX, Toon Boom Harmony 14 (or 15, haven’t updated yet), El Capitan 10.11 or Sierra 10.12, iMac 5k with decent specs or on older Mac Pro towers. Mostly scanning 12f animation paper or 8.5x11 sheets, also want something with a large flatbed at least 11x17 for larger artwork. We do peg punches on our animations so something that can register pegs (tape a black piece of tape or what have you) would be awesome as well.

I tried getting a smaller scanner to work but I ran into some TWAIN issues, and we need a new scanner anyway so it’s time to consider my options. We want to invest in a great scanner that will last for a long time! Any advice on what to purchase, that’s commercially available and will work with Harmony with minimal fiddling? I can update the scan.conf file and do Terminal functions no problem, but knowing which models of scanners to look into would be very helpful! If anyone has some leads I’d love to hear them.

Thank you!

I can only comment based on my experience which was using one of the models. It was purchased more than 10 years ago, around 2005, I think. The model is the Ricoh_IS330 and it worked pretty well using the Scan module to feed 2D paper animation for many years. The scanner is still working today, but it’s no longer used on a daily basis since the studio went totally digital a few years ago. I think once it needed some sort of repairing, but I’m not sure.

I’m not sure how this is an issue with all machines or if it’s different in Mac (the studio worked in Windows), but there were complications when trying to put the scanner back to work a couple of years after a period it wasn’t being used. The problems were related with SCSI adapters and drivers. To summarize, it was impossible or extremely complicated to make the scanner work on a new computer, it had to be one with Windows XP. I don’t remember the details, maybe it’s possible to buy new SCSI adapters with a special motherboard, because I don’t think regular ones support it.


Luis Canau

Thank you for the response, it’s very helpful! I appreciate it. :slight_smile:

I’m thinking of getting an Epson GT-15000 off of eBay or equivalent, and hopefully getting it to work in a Mac environment wouldn’t be too difficult. If worse came to worse I could set up a Windows machine purely as a scan station, though that wouldn’t be optimal.

Scanners are notoriously difficult in regards to driver support. Most somewhat older scanners will not function with newer operating systems. A secondary issue is that even modern scanners often don’t have good quality drivers and/or software to process the scanned images.

I strongly suggest getting VueScan for all your scanning needs. My old scanner wasn’t compatible with Windows 7, and VueScan breathed new life into it: and the scan quality improved considerably as well. VueScan support autofeeds in all supported scanner models.

Refer to http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/supported-scanners.html for supported scanners.

This is incredibly helpful, thank you! Follow-up question: did VueScan get your old scanner working thru the Toon Boom Harmony scan interface, or as a separate scan interface, where you imported the scanned bitmap files into Harmony? I will try VueScan with my old, non-autofeed scanner and look into purchasing options for a big auto-feed unit. Thanks!