Scanning lots of photos at once with GIMP on Ubuntu Linux

Scanning lots of photos at once with GIMP on Ubuntu Linux

I needed a way to scan a lot of photos at once. I was going to write a GIMP plugin to extract out multiple images from a single scanned image of 3 or 4 photos, and then rotate them automatically. But as always, someone had already beat me to it :)

See this forum on GimpTalk for the original script.

(The only problem I had is that the Deskew plugin for GIMP was located on a website whose server seems to be permanently offline. I did manage to find an alternative location, so I've posted a self-hosted link to the plugin below)

Steps to scan in multiple images:

  • Download DivideScannedImages.scm to
    ~/.gimp-2.6/scripts
  • Download deskew to /usr/lib/gimp/2.0/plug-ins
  • Start GIMP
  • Click Filters -> Batch Tools -> Batch Divide Scanned Images

The rest is easy to figure out. Just make sure your 'size threshold' is large enough. Also, it may help to cover the photos with a couple of sheets of A4 paper, to give an even white background. Then place a few photos (3 or 4) on the scanner, with adequate spaces between them, scan them, and let the plugin do the rest!

Thanks to RobA for the awesome script!

 

Example

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