Programmatically Scanning APIs (TWAIN & WIA) for C#

I have been struggling for some time to develop a program to trigger a scanner. Now I am going to share some of the things I learned about programmatically scanning. There are variety of scanners and they use different kind of protocols to communicate with the computer. As many of the applications programs needed scanning feature in their applications, developers had to develop Application Programming Interfaces(API) for scanners. The API would be the interface that would be dealing with any kind of scanner. Simply means the application does not have to know how the hardware part in the scanner is working to access it directly. They just interacts with the scanner interface.

There are two main Standard Software Protocols or APIs that can be used to acquire images from a scanner.

1. TWAIN
• The word TWAIN is not an official acronym, however, it is widely known as "Technology Without An Interesting Name."
• For more information visit, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWAIN

     2.   WIA (Windows Image Acquisition) (Sometimes also called as Windows Imaging Architecture)

• Microsoft driver model and Application Programming Interface (API) for Microsoft Windows Me and later Windows operating systems that enables graphics software to communicate with imaging hardware such as scanners, digital cameras and Digital Video-equipment.
• For more information visit, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Image_Acquisition

In my next posts I will post, how these APIs has helped me to develop my program.

Happy Coding.

Regards,
Jaliya