The PNG format works beautifully with GIMP and Pix, the two applications I use most. The PNG format works in every image viewer and every image editor. I save the scans as PNG files to ensure there is no loss of detail from the scans. My notebook is due for replacement and the next notebook will have at least twice the memory, removing the memory problem for most of my scanning sessions. I switched to using a desktop machine with more memory. On my notebook with large photographs, I had to restart Simplescan every third scan to free up memory. Simplescan locks up memory without reusing it. If you get the mixture wrong, you can end up with multiple documents mixed up in the wrong file. when you have several documents scanned, you can select individual documents and save or delete them. You can scan several documents then save them one at a time or as a group. I use Simplescan when I do not need the maximum resolution.

Simplescan is a common scanning application on Linux but shows only 2400 dpi as the maximum scanning resolution, not the 4800 dpi available from my 9000F Mark II.

As an example, simplescan does not support all the resolutions of my scanner.

The alternatives may not support odd models of scanners or all the features of your scanner. There are excellent free open source alternatives to Vuescan. The Canon 9000F Mark II shows up as device 'pixma:04A9190D'.

Testing against Linux Sane version 1.0.25 using applications Simplescan 3.20.0 and Xsane 0.999. Testing with a Canon 9000F Mark II with USB ID 04a9:190d labelled 'Canon, Inc. All the software tested here is faster than the scanner. Testing VueScan 9 圆4 (9.5.76) in Linux Mint 18.1 on a machine with a medium speed processor and a fast SSD.

Vuescan x64