There are simply too many devices that can acquire images for any image software company to keep and maintain a library of every device that could possibly acquire an image to be used in their software. Imaging applications (such as Photoshop) do not have or maintain any TWAIN drivers. If you purchase a digital camera, the TWAIN should always come with the camera or it will be able to be downloaded from the manufacturer’s web site. TWAINs are created and maintained by the manufacturer of the imaging device. The official meaning of the chosen term TWAIN, also referenced the extreme difficulty that devices like scanners had in the early 90’s communicating with the image applications that were designed to work with those acquired images. It also means “two' – which is an imaging hardware device and an imaging software application being connected. They chose TWAIN based from the phrase “never the twain shall meet'. The official website for the TWAIN working group states that the first name they chose was already taken. One of the most common definition calls it “Technology Without an Interesting Name.' Some even wrote this as the “official' meaning of the word. And the acronym theory persists even to this day. This lead many to believe that this word was an acronym. They set the word TWAIN itself in all caps to make it stand out from other “tech speak' coming out at the time. Since then, updates occur every so often. They created the TWAIN Working Group and developed the initial toolkit in 1992. Their intention involved standardizing the communication between the imaging software and the hardware that created those images. And that could only work with the software they made and created by the devices they made!īack in 1992, representatives of some of the largest companies in the imaging industry got together. Many scanner companies had their own “proprietary' image files. Even file types didn’t receive standardization yet. It also involved the scanner acquiring images into the applications that everyone wanted to use these images in. In the early 1990’s, dental practices found it so very difficult to get a scanner to communicate with a PC. But initially this is what exactly the TWAIN protocol is. There’s quite a bit more to it these days. This is needed in order to use that image (such as Photoshop). It saves that image directly into a “TWAIN compliant' imaging software application. TWAIN, put simply, is a protocol that allows an imaging device to acquire an image (initially flat-bed scanners). DentiMax Imaging Director Jim Ramey explains what a TWAIN driver is.

Yet it’s unknown technology in the imaging industry.

Commonly referred to as “technology without an interesting name,' TWAINs are a very important.

Gendex sensor drivers