WIA vs TWAIN

Are the LEADTOOLS components WIA compliant? What is the difference between the two?

Thanks!

Edited by moderator Tuesday, October 4, 2016 4:34:25 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

There are many similarities between TWAIN and WIA, but there are also some distinct differences that you should base your choice on when developing an application.

Similarities:

• As long as a driver exists, both are able to acquire images from devices such as a scanner or camera. For devices like cameras, sometimes the driver is actually WIA, but you can access it via the "TWAIN compatibility layer".
  
• Acquire images with a dialog.
  
• Programmatically set properties of the device and acquire the images programmatically without showing a dialog.
  
• Not all capabilities are supported by each device, so you can query the device for the ones it does support.
  

Differences:

• TWAIN is better designed to use automatic document feeders (ADF). WIA does not have a robust API to use ADF, which limits its usage to flatbed scanners and cameras.
  
• In general, when a device supports both TWAIN and WIA, TWAIN is better for scanners and WIA is better for acquiring images from still cameras and video devices.
  
• WIA uses a common dialog for all devices, while TWAIN uses a dialog created by the device manufacturer. Practically speaking, this almost always means that the TWAIN dialog will provide more options and advanced control over the device.
  
• TWAIN allows you to use custom capabilities that the device manufacturer has created even though they do not exist in the TWAIN specification.
  
• TWAIN has three transfer modes (Native, Memory, File) and WIA only has two (Memory, File).
  
• Most TWAIN sources save the settings of the previous scan, while WIA does not.
  
• TWAIN supports options for each page when scanning in duplex mode, but WIA uses the same settings for both sides.
  

In a nutshell, we recommend to use TWAIN to capture from a scanner and WIA to capture from a camera.

For more details about WIA, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/stillimage/WIA-arch.mspx

For more details about TWAIN, please visit http://www.twain.org/

LEADTOOLS provides full support for TWAIN 2.0 and WIA in the Imaging Pro toolkit and better. For more information and a free evaluation, please visit:

• https://www.leadtools.com/sdk/imaging-pro
  
• https://www.leadtools.com/sdk/wia
  
• https://www.leadtools.com/sdk/twain
  
• https://www.leadtools.com/sdk/twain/fast-twain—Available in Document Imaging family products only.
  

Once you have downloaded and installed LEADTOOLS, there are some demos you can review as well:
.NET

• <LEADTOOLS Install Folder>\Examples\DotNet\CS\WiaDemo
  
• <LEADTOOLS Install Folder>\Examples\DotNet\CS\TwainDemo
  

C-API

• <LEADTOOLS Install Folder>\Examples\CDLL\WiaDemo
  
• <LEADTOOLS Install Folder>\Examples\CDLL\Twain
  

Edited by moderator Tuesday, November 29, 2016 12:16:51 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Added new difference