Brent Kearney

Using a Canon CanoScan LiDE 70 with Mac OSX

Posted on: June 14th, 2007 @ 15:09

I recently unpacked a new Canon CanoScan LiDE 70 scanner, followed the included directions, and plugged it into my mac to start moving towards a paperless — or at least, less paper — office. I put a document on the scanner bed, clicked the preview button in the “ScanGear” software, and it started to calibrate the scanner:

Processing calibration data from a scanner…

As it was “processing calibration data from a scanner”, I could hear the scanner buzzing briefly, and then got an error message: “Cannot communicate with scanner. Cable may be disconnected or scanner may be turned off. Check status. Scanner driver will be closed.”

Crappy drivers, I thought. The documentation kept mentioning OSX 10.3, which is ancient. So I went to Canon’s driver download site and discovered that new drivers for OSX were released this month. I installed those, repeated the process, and met with the same results.

Cannot communicate with scanner. Scanner driver will be closed.
Cannot communicate with scanner. Scanner driver will be closed.

I was about to repack the scanner and send it back. Before I did, I thought I’d open the cover and watch what was going on during the failed calibration. The light came on, and to my surprise, the calibration worked this time. The preview scan, however, was completely overexposed. Probably because it calibrated with no light reflecting back, since the cover was wide open. Then I took a closer look at the scanning surface, and realized my folly.

scanner

Most of the photocopiers and scanners that I’ve used align to the top-right corner; this one is bottom left. The calibration was failing because the document wasn’t at the “top” (bottom) of the scanning bed to reflect light back. Doh. After recalibrating (advanced tab of ScanGear) with a document in the correct position, it works like a charm.

By the way, to start ScanGear, click the Photo1 button in CanoScan Toolbox, then select the “Display the Scanner Driver” option, and click the Scan button.

scangear

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  • guerrillasuit

    You have to be kidding me.

    I went through your steps and it worked perfectly. I was really worried I was going to take back the scanner. Thanks for posting your ‘fix’.

    peace.

  • http://brent.kearneys.ca Brent Kearney

    I know — embarrassing, isn’t it? Despite that, I figured I probably wasn’t the only one, so I sucked it up and posted the “solution”. :P

    Cheers.

  • dobie

    It took me two frickin’ hours to get this thing to work! The earlier model was sooooo easy. Plug it in and scan. There was one part of your instructions that didn’t work for me — I had to remove the image from the scanbed to do the calibrate thing… your instructions say to calibrate with the image in place. Removing and then calibrating without the image finally worked!!! Thank you for getting me that far though!
    Dobie

  • http://aslickersticker.com matti

    Dam Canon,
    What happened to the PnP?

    Thank you very much for this simple explanation. This is, I believe, the true power of the internet.

    Please keep it up.

  • http://www.mac-info.cz lynn

    Hi, how to recalibrate, please?
    I connect scanner, place the paper in a right position and have the same problems with calibrating, with opened cover proceeded. So I’m looking for a way how to recalibrate. I have latest drivers and latest CanoScan Toolbox 5.0. Help doesn’t help because it looks it’s only for windows. (OS 10.4.10)
    Thanks for help!

  • http://www.mac-info.cz lynn

    I found out, that I can (in copy options) tick for using driver settings, so it opens scangear (Why there is no option for opening it in menu?) Looking for calibration and I have again the same error. :-/

  • http://www.mac-info.cz lynn

    Sorry for “spam”. Your picture helped me! For calibration it’s necessary to have something with letter format! :-)

  • Pingback: Mac Info » Blog Archive » Skenování s CanoScan LiDE 70 v MacOS X

  • http://brent.kearneys.ca Brent Kearney

    Thanks for the feedback everyone!

    A little update: I recently formatted my computer and installed the new Mac OS X 10.5, “Leopard”. I just got my scanner working again, but it was a little different than last time. I could not get the thing to calibrate with the document cover closed. Open, with nothing on the scanner bed, it would calibrate, but then of course the images are totally overexposed and washed out.

    However, with an 8.5″ wide document on the bed (as per Lynn’s suggestion), and with the document cover open, it calibrated, and looks OK. One can make manual adjustments to the calibration in the Advanced tab of ScanGear.

    Cheers,
    Brent

  • Michael

    I have a Lide30 and under Leopard on my Intel iMac, I was having a very difficult time getting it to work. But I finally found the updated drivers and it seems to be working now. I even installed the CanoScan Toolbox 4.1 and that was working too. But when I “upgraded” CanoScan Toolbox to v5.0, the toolbox wouldn’t see the scanner any more because I did not know where to put the driver so that canoscan toolbox 5.0 can see it. Where does it go? In CanoScan Toolbox 4.1, the driver went into a plugins sub-folder that was inside the the CanoScan Toolbox 4.1 folder. But after installing CanoScan Toolbox 5.0, there was no plugins sub-folder created. Ha anyone gotten CanoScan Toolbox 5.0 to work for them on an Intel iMac with Leopard?

  • http://n/a Ian Lewis

    well i have been trying to get this working for about a week. tried this and its working? well how about that lmao. i was just about to throw it through the window . lmao thanks

  • tomy

    Hi

    When you say ScanGear, you mean the right box in the canoscan toolbox so, seattings box?¿?

    I can not find in it the recalibrate options…

    If not, i didn’t see anywhere the ScanGerar, and spotlight didn’t find it.

    I am going crazy with it!!!!!

    Thank you!!!

  • Aaron

    Thank you for doing this, I discovered this problem typed it into google and came straight to your site.

    I am very grateful for all the help I get from people so generous in there time to share the problems they come across. It makes the small things that take a lot of time to sole so much easier and simpler

    Thank you

  • tomy

    could anyone help me plis… I don’t know what is the scangear.

    I cannot recalibrate my scanner…

    Please. thank you.

  • Brent

    Tomy, ScanGear is the driver software that comes with the scanner. You can download the latest version from the Canon website, which I linked to in the article. You can start it either through the other scanning software that comes with the scanner, or via the built-in scanning software in Mac OS X, called Image Capture (Devices menu, I think).

  • http://[email protected] Art Hindmarsh

    Will a canon 8000F scanner work on a mac computer?

  • http://www.petermatthews.net Pete

    I have just upgraded my Tiger to Leopard. And, I can’t get my Lid25 scanner to work. I have done everything! Latest drivers, CanoScan Toolbox to v5.0. I even tried Vuesan which sees the scanner but doesn’t work.
    Has anyone with Leopard cracked this yet?

  • Brent

    A little update: I’m running 10.5.3 now, and I’ve installed the latest drivers (12.13.0) from Canon. The calibration at first was a problem, and I had to remove everything from the scanner bed, and leave the cover open, to get the calibration to complete successfully.

    The scans looked terrible, but after that first successful calibration, I was able to calibrate it properly, with a full sheet of printed text on paper, and the cover closed. Then I saved the calibration settings in a new profile.

    To answer someone’s earlier question about how to start ScanGear, where the calibration settings are: start the CanoScan Toolbox, click the “Save” button, check-off the “Display the Scanner Driver” option, then click the “Scan” button. ScanGear will open.

    In ScanGear, click the Advanced Tab to see the calibration controls. Click the drop-down list (“Custom”) to add and save new calibration profiles.

  • Dina

    Thank you sooooooo much!

    I thought that it was not compatible with my iMac and i was about
    to send it back! Then i found your instructions! :)

    Thank you again

  • me

    >Ha anyone gotten CanoScan Toolbox 5.0 to work for them on an Intel iMac with Leopard?

    I’m having same problem.

  • http://brent.kearneys.ca Brent

    Canon has updated it’s LiDE 70 drivers for 10.6 (snow leopard):

    http://www.canon.ca/english/index-customersupport.asp?pid=415

    Note that there are TWO files needed – the driver, and CanoScan Toolbox. The link to download the driver is on the 2nd page of search results, when you select scanner, LiDE 70, Software & Drivers, and search. The driver file is named “lide70osx1213ej4.dmg”.

  • Howard Huxter

    Doing this does NOT work. I have tried virtually everything on the one computer. There is a ‘test scanner’ function in the software somewhere and this works fine so it cannot be a scanner hardware problem as indicated in some other posts on line. It is unfortunate that Canon choose not to respond to the many requests for help on this issue.
    On a second computer the scanner works as normal but the calibration function when chosen brings up the same eror message

  • Howard Huxter

    Ooops. Well, as a final fling I deleted everything associated with the scanner (and that involved finding some obscure folders and not just using delete driver) and shut down, rebooted and reinstalled from the original CD supplied with the scanner. Only this time it wanted to boot up OS9 to install so I just did it manually from the CD. (installation
    meant scangear driver 7.2 for OS9 and 7.2X for OSX, Canonscan toolbox, Omnipage (installs on OSX but works thru OS9) and Photoshop elements.

    I first ran PE and it came up with the same familiar error message. I opened the lid of the scanner and tried again and it started to go and then hung as if the lock was on (it wasn’t). I put an A4 paper on the glass without closing the cover and it started to calibrate. I was then able to scan as normal.

    I then tried Omnipage OCR which works via OSX but in OS9 and it worked too. I forget whther it wanted to calibrate or not.

    So there is something funny about this whole calibration process.
    I may add that I have had this scanner for 6+ years and have been using it continually for OCR and making jpeg/pdf via PE. This problem
    began last week when I tried to test an Epson V300 I was thinking of buying from a friend. That was not a pleasant experience and gave rise to this problem. The quality of the scans on the Canon are far superior to the Epson on my computer. PE is great bundled software as is Omnipage for OCR.

    The reason I was contemplating the Epson was because it does 4 slides at once without demounting them whereas the LIDE80 does one at a time and you have to demount it. So, I’m now thinking about the 8800F which does the same (4 at once) but what I’d really like to know is: does the OCR software (listed as Omniopage SE1) work uniquely through OSX?

  • http://[email protected] totUtiliawalk

    +1

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