Yes, this is a short post about what some people will no doubt consider a trivial issue, but Image Capture’s scan button annoyed me no end today whilst trying to scan a bunch of documents.
I’ve been infuriated by the scan button in Image Capture before when I was scanning in my family’s photo albums. Why the hell does that button not have a keyboard shortcut? I don’t like having to constantly use my mouse when it’s not necessary, and according to iPhoto I clicked that damn scan button just over 1,000 times!
Today though, I had a different issue, but with the same button. Today I was using Image Capture to scan in some documents, and when I opened Image Capture the overview looked perfect so I went to click the scan button to see it was disabled. I tried playing with settings, I tried trashing preference files, I even tried re-installing the driver for my scanner all to no avail.
I couldn’t figure out how to enable the scan button, or save the whole image scan in Image Capture. I eventually discovered (after about 20 minutes of failed troubleshooting, and a little help from Google) that before the scan button will be enabled, you must select which area of the overview you would like to scan by dragging over the preview.
Now this just seems completely bonkers to me, and I’m obviously not alone in finding it confusing, as there were plenty of people in the same situation as me on Google.
I just hope Apple update Image Capture sometime soon, and add a keyboard shortcut for that damn scan button, and also make the whole overview default for the scan. As it stands, Image Capture’s interface isn’t up-to Apple’s usual high standards in my view.