Do You Need CapturePerfect for a Canon Scanner? TOO BAD!
After days worth of searching, (and I don’t mean casually looking over the course of a couple days, I’m talking hours of searching that equate to days of time) CapturePerfect is not available anywhere online. Nor is its cousins cappe3.exe cappe31.exe or any of the versions that make up this pile of software.
What is CapturePerfect you ask?
CapturePerfect is the bundled software that comes with canon scanners that canon scanners will simply not work without. You can download the drivers from their website just fine, but they don’t supply the software for the scanner online for a free download. And without the software, you might as well use that scanner as a paperweight. You heard me. Canon, those pricks, give you one half of the equation to make your canon scanners work. They’ll offer upgrades to the software, but you have to have the software first before you can upgrade it.
No problem, can’t I just use the built in windows scanning system as a CapturePerfect Alternative ?
NOPE! Canon scanners operate on a long since debunked platform called “TWAIN”. And refuse to work with the windows scanning utility of WIA. So without the software, you’re screwed. You can buy the software on amazon for something to the tune of $80, or you can try use other more horrible paid softwares to make it work. Also, some jerk decided to name a crapy camera software Capture Perfect 1.3, which is just confusing. The unwritten rule of software creation, much like pornstar names, is you don’t take the name of another. Luckily, those of use that work in Boulder Computer Repair have a solution. After my long search for a software that could make a Canon scanner work I found it!
It’s called…
NAPS2. Which stands for Not Another PDF Scanner 2. These guys made my life so much simpler and I can’t thank them enough. NAPS2 works for both TWAIN and WIA supported scanners. It makes scanning incredibly easy and you can get your free download of the NAPS2 program here.
Wow, I really appreciate someone taking the time to break this down into layman terms. Super helpful blog!
One of the best blogs I’ve read in a very long time!
You’re a legend! I’ve just been trying to figure out why I couldn’t get my CanoScan scanner to work on a new laptop for the last 2 hours. Now I know why. One thing to add – if people find there is a problem with not being able to find the scanner under the WIA setting, switch to Twain. I can’t believe Canon’s ill-advised approach to this – it’s verging on criminal. When I phoned for support, they told me the problem lied with Microsoft – total bullshit – just trying to fob me off. I will never buy another Canon product again.