Is anyone successfully using an Epson V700 on LInux?

I just got a V700 set up on my Ubuntu machine, and while XSane sees it, it doesn’t give me any color options other than Color/B&W, which are both 8 bit color. Is there anything I can do to enable 16 bit scanning? Or is this just a limitation of the drivers?

Perhaps the only piece of closed source software I recomment is VueScan. It’ll open up all the options and it runs on Linux.

I don’t know about scanner driver in Ubuntu, but in opensuse there are
iscan - EPSON Image Scan! front-end for scanners and all-in-ones

Image Scan! is a graphical scanner utility for people that do not need all the bells and whistles provided by several of the other utilities out there (xsane, QuiteInsane, Kooka).

At the moment it only supports SEIKO EPSON scanners and all-in-ones. However, the scanner driver it provides can be used by any other SANE standard compliant scanner utility.

Note that several scanners require a non-free plugin before they can be used with this software
iscan-firmware - Firmware files for Epson scanners

Additionally proprietary firmware files are only needed for the following scanners:

  • esfw8b.bin: Epson GT-F720/GT-S620, Perfection V30/V300 Photo

  • esfwad.bin: Epson Perfection GT-F730/GT-S630/Perfection V33/V330

  • esfw86.bin: Epson GT-1500 scanner

  • esfw7A.bin: Epson Perfection Photo V200 scanners and similar

  • esfw68.bin: Perfection V350 PHOTO / GT-F700-

  • esfw66.bin: Perfection V10 / GT-S600, Perfection V100 PHOTO / GT-F650

  • esfw54.bin: Perfection 4490 PHOTO / GT-X750

  • esfw7C.bin: Epson Colorio GT-X770/Perfection Photo V500 scanners

  • esfwA1.bin: Epson Colorio GT-X820/Perfection Photo V600 scanners

  • esfwdd.bin: Epson Perfection V37, V370, GT-F740 and GT-S640 scanners

  • esfw010c.bin: EPSON Perfection V19 scanner

  • esfweb.bin: EPSON GT-X820, Perfection V550

iscan-plugin - Iscan plugin for Image Scan for Epson Scanners

The proprietary binary libraries are provided (in object code form only) under the terms of the license agreement provided in the EAPL and LICENSE files in the directory /usr/share/doc/packages/iscan-plugin

The proprietary libraries used by the driver epkowa are only needed for the following scanners (see: SANE: External Backends (Drivers)):

  • libesci-interpreter-gt-f720: GT-F720/GT-S620, Perfection V30/V300 Photo

  • esci-interpreter-gt-s*: Epson GT-S50 and GT-S80 scanner

  • libesci-interpreter-perfection-v330: GT-F730/GT-S630/Perfection V33/V330

  • network: Plugin for using Epson scanners with ISCAN over network

  • libesint7E: Stylus CX4300/CX4400/CX4450/CX5500/CX5600/DX4400/DX4450

  • libiscan-plugin-ds-30: Epson WorkForce DS-30

  • libesint86: Epson GT-1500 scanner

  • libesint7A: Epson Perfection Photo V200 scanners and similar

  • libesint68: GT-F700 Perfection V350 Photo

  • libesint66: Epson Perfection 4180 / GT-F600

  • libesint54: Epson Perfection 4490 / GT-X750

  • libesint7C: Epson Colorio GT-X770/Perfection Photo V500 scanners

  • libesintA1: Epson Colorio GT-X820/Perfection Photo V600 scanners

  • libiscan-plugin-perfection-v370: Epson Perfection V37, V370, GT-F740

and GT-S640 scanners

  • libiscan-plugin-gt-s650: Epson Perfection V19 scanner

  • libiscan-plugin-perfection-v550: EPSON GT-X820, Perfection V550

If your scanner is supported by the driver epkowa but does not need a proprietary module, you can use a software package iscan or it may also work with a driver which is included in the package sane-backends.

Ironically I actually worked on iScan when I worked at Epson to get it working and documented on Ubuntu :wink:

that awesome, just curious, are they paying you to support linux because there are many linux support demands or because they love linux?

I am not sure of the demand, and I haven’t worked there in 4 years. They must have had some demand, or else they wouldn’t have done it.

They do use a lot of Linux, all the printer and projector firmware is embedded linux. There are ppd files that work with CUPS inside the macOS driver as well.

I’ve actually tried Epson’s scanning software, but it doesn’t seem to give me an option to change the bit depth. It looks like VueScan does the trick though, thanks for the recommendation @paperdigits