How do I get Acrobat to scan using my Epson printer color settings?

[adwul62]

Maybe the solution is easy, don't know. I vainly searched for it.

When scanning using Acrobat (File > Create PDF > From scanner), the colours do not correspond with the actual colours. They are too bright, I don't know.

OTOH when using the scanner software that comes with the printer, the colours are fairly close to what I see.

Am afraid I do not know how to, let's say, 'force' Acrobat to use the scanner colours.
(Without any extra 'prompts' / pop up windows)

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Windows 10 x64, Acrobat 2020 Pro (Classic), Epson ET-5800

=
LATER:
I discovered there is a way to scan documents to .pdf using the Epson scanner software only, i.e. not using Acrobat.
Once I open the file, I am encountering the same issue. Colours are still too bright, much brighter than if I were to scan the document to a image file, though slightly less brighter than if I were to scan using Acrobat (File>Create>Use Scanner)
see attachment.

[radzmar]

You might check the manual of you scanner, if you can set up any color settings for scanning. There may be different settings used when scanning via twain or directly into a PDF file. Acrobat cannot control the scanner settings remotely. It simply receives the image data from the twain driver. If you use the Custom Scan option from Acrobats scan menu you should see the user interface of the twain driver where you can set up the scan. Those options aren't shared with Acrobat so you may have to set them everytime again to get the wanted results.

[adwul62]

Thank you - sorry for the delay. I have been busy with this about whole day now, but give up.
There is something strange: when I use the scanner software scanning a single page to PNG, the quality is fine.
when I do the same (Using Epson Scanner software) to scan a single  page to PDF that look quite okay as well.
When I scan multiple pages (no matter whether using Epson software or Acrobat), it goes wrong. There is some sort of colourshift or something, but the result is much more brighter.
(BTW, I also tried WIA, but it requires a lot of finetuning, white comes out blueish, one needs to increase brightness, etc. and on top it does not have double sided scanning, so I let that rest).

So, single page to PNG, okay, single page to PDF, okay. Multiple pages (searchable or non-searchable) too bright.
In the attachment, on the left, that is the most realistic colour, in the middle it is fairly 'acceptable',  on the right details are lost.

Anyway, there simply is no solution for this, I let it rest.

Thanks for your reply.

[gary_sc]

Hi Adwul,

When you're scanning from within Acrobat, you ARE scanning with your software's scanning software. And, depending on the software, you might have fewer options than scanning directly. Assuming that you're on a PC, Acrobat uses a piece of software called Twain to connect Acrobat and your scanner's software. Because of this, sometimes it IS better to use the software directly rather than through Acrobat.

When you're having issues with colors, I have to ask if you have your monitor and your scanner calibrated. I do not know if you're old enough but "back in the old days," you'd walk into a TV store filled with cathode ray tube TVs and every one of them was set to the same station, and everyone looked different. While flat-screen TVS have much better default calibration, they are still off. The calibration process essentially goes through anywhere from 80-150 different colors and makes sure that what's red in one is THE EXACT SAME RED in the other. In all honesty, the most likely user of this is either printing companies and professional photographers.

Now, back to your situation: are you saving the documents as png-8 or png-24? This is important as png-8 is what's called indexed color and can easily be shifted way off of the actual colors. I have a strong hunch that this is what your issue is.

What I strongly recommend you do is scan to the TIF format. There are two advantages to this: one is that TIF does use Indexed colors and is not lossy (like jpg images are). So any color you scan is much less likely to be radically shifted as you're seeing. The 2nd advantage is that you can take these TIF images from your desktop, drag them onto the Acrobat icon in your Startup strip (or Dock if you're on a Mac) and they will automatically be converted into a PDF. If you drag multiple TIF images onto the Acrobat icon, Acrobat will ask if these should be saved as one document or independent documents. Then you just sit back, and they will be PDFed and OCRed. 

Good luck!

[adwul62]

Thank you so much for your elaborate reply. It is truly appreciated. I again spent quite some time on this...
I understand your thoughts about calibrating, but, no offense meant, I believe it is something else.
When I get various colours when scanning the same thing and shown on the same monitor, using the same scanner, etc. I think it may be something else.

Hence I went on to experiment with these TIF files.
Flatbed scanned a colourful document, both as TIF and PNG. When displayed side-by-side I could not see the difference.
Now, I made a few copies of the same (ctrl-c/ctrl-v), so 4 TIFs 4 PNGs and combined them into a PDF: they were fine (no colourshift). I expected that to happen as it happened when scanning multiple documents using the sheetfeeder.
Nothing of the like.

Now I discovered what likely is the problem and this is really weird...

When performing a single scan, using the flatbed, I have two options:
1. show a preview first, then hit the [Scan] button, or
2. hit the [Scan]  button instantly, i.e. without preview.

There is the colour difference!
I tried a few times, indeed, using the scan preview gets me much better results. Obviously this explains the colourshift when using the sheetfeeder (ADF - automatic document feeder): no preview.
Last thing I expected...

[gary_sc]

Interesting. 

Question 1: Which is closer to the original?

Question 2: Are you making any adjustments after doing the preview and before the scan?

[adwul62]

The left one, with a preview first and then scan comes very close. Did not make any changes, the only difference is the preview first. In the past, with my earlier Epson printer, I had a lengthy email exchange with Epson support, about the same issue, but we were not able to pinpoint the problem.
That said, whilst knowing about the problem, regretfully there is no solution. Doing a preview first of every scan isn't workable when using the sheetfeeder.
BTW (Off-topic)
Something else, I never used TIF so far to be honest. Mainly because the files are so big, 24,9 MB each.
They are all exactly the same size. Even when I scan a blanc page.
Anyway, when combining 4 of those files to a pdf, the result is a 2MB file...
When scanning to PNG (using the same settings) I get 19MB files. Combining 4 of those files, results in a 23MB file...
(I did this for testing, to see whether would be colourshift one way or the other)

[gary_sc]

Hi Adwul,

Yes, TIF images are large; an 8-bit letter page is about 8MB (blank or not, all white or black pixels are pixels). However, after converting that to a PDF, the size should be between 75-150 kb (depending on the amount of stuff on the page)

I had one job that needed a page feeder (I borrowed a friend's Fuji-scan) and the PDFs that that thing gave were very large, but after re-doing the OCR in Acrobat (instead of the OCR done by the Fuji-scan software), the file size again went down to the numbers above. For the sizes you mention above, which application did the OCR? The scanning software or Acrobat?

It appears that you're not really familiar with the use of the Preview window. Here's a blog I wrote for Adobe on this issue. It might have some information that might be of interest.

Scanning Clean, Searchable PDFs
https://forums.adobe.com/community/creativepipeline/blog/2018/01/22/scanning-clean-search-able-pdfs

[adwul62]

Thanks again.. As the URL didn't work I did a search on "Scanning Clean, Searchable PDFs" and found the actual URL in another thread, titled: "OCR- What can be, what can't be and more" to  read:

http://photosbycoyne.com/Gary's_Help/Scanning/clean-scanning.html/

A little similar to what you are describing there is built in the scanner software as 'Text Enhancement'. It does affect colours though. So you can see the differences. When it comes to the photo, all are 'so-so', admittedly Acrobat comes close. 
I tried to take a photo using my smartphone, so I could compare, but in whatever mode or using whatever settings, the smartphone simply does not take the photo the way I see it: it is always lighter. Some kind of default 'boost' or something, which is by design I guess. It gets rid of the background text (like Text Enhancement in Epson Scan) automatically. Probably the software is meant to meet the demand of 99% of the users...