Get your scanner to work with Photoshop CS6

Using a desktop scanner to bring printed materials into Adobe Photoshop is as old as Photoshop itself. In fact, one of the reasons Photoshop became the de facto image editor is that Adobe licensed it to be bundled with scanners throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s when designers and publishers were buying their first scanners. In those days, if you bought a scanner, you got Photoshop!

Now, everything has changed. After 20 years of scanning into Photoshop, the latest Macs, OS X, and Photoshop CS6 have made so many changes to their architecture that users of some older scannersas well as current users of Apple's Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) are finding it impossible to do this any longer.

There are several reasons for this breakdown, and several ways to deal with the consequences.

What broke?

TWAIN: Beginning in the early 1990s, Apple and Photoshop supported TWAIN plug-ins. TWAIN was developed as a universal standard so that applications could access various manufacturers' scanner driver controls. In most cases, it worked brilliantlyso brilliantly that people forgot about the aging TWAIN connector technology between their apps and their scanners.

Since Mac OS X 10.6, Apple has been encouraging developers to move away from TWAIN and instead use the ImageKit technology that is at the heart of Apples Image Capture utility. Photoshop CS6 supports both TWAIN and ImageKit drivers, but to use a TWAIN driver, you must download and install Adobes optional plug-in. Photoshop Elements also has a TWAIN plug-in, but youll have to move it from the Optional Plug-ins folder to the Plug-ins folder. Clearly, Adobe is also directing users away from TWAIN.

64-bit vs. 32-bit: In addition, Apple has been moving to a 64-bit architecture in OS X, and away from the older 32-bit architecture that almost all TWAIN drivers were written for.

Adobe Creative Suite 6 offers the first version of Photoshop that runs exclusively in 64-bit mode. This means that any plug-ins you want to use in Photoshop CS6 must also be written for 64-bit operation, or they simply wont work. Unfortunately, most TWAIN scanner drivers were written for 32-bit operation, and unless their developers chose to re-write them for 64-bit operation, you wont be able to use them in Photoshop CS6. Drivers can be 32-bit only, 32- and 64-bit (universal), or 64-bit only, although it's very unlikely any drivers would be 64-bit only.

PowerPC vs. Intel: If your scanner is really old, its TWAIN driver may have been written only for PowerPC processors and not for Intel processors. In that case it wont work at all on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion or higher. Heres how to tell: if your Mac is already running Lion and your scanner is working, its TWAIN driver was written for Intel processors and will work in Photoshop CS6. If your Mac is running Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or earlier, contact your scanner manufacturer and ask if your driver is Intel-native, or check the system requirements for that driver online. If you have Photoshop CS5 running in its normal 64-bit mode, and your scanner is available in the File >- Import -> & menu, then the scanner will continue to work in CS6. To be sure Photoshop CS5 is running in 64-bit mode, select the Photoshop CS5 application icon in the Finder, choose File -> Get Info, and then make sure the checkbox labeled Open in 32-bit Mode is unchecked. Conversely, if you want to scan in 32-bit mode (or use any other plug-ins that are operative only in 32-bit mode) in Photoshop CS5, you would make sure the 32-bit Mode box is checked.

The bottom line is that TWAIN drivers are on their way out, and ImageKit drivers are now the standard.

Your options

If you want to continue using an older scanner, you have several options.

Check to see if there is a 64-bit TWAIN driver available from the scanners manufacturer. If so, install the optional TWAIN plug-in for Photoshop CS6 and your 64-bit driver. Youll then be able to scan into Photoshop CS6.

If there is no 64-bit driver for your scanner, use an older version of Photoshop, running in 32-bit mode. (To run Photoshop in 32-bit mode, select the Photoshop CS5 application icon in the Finder, choose File -> Get Info, and then tick the checkbox labeled Open in 32-bit Mode.) If necessary, dedicate a Mac for use as a scanning workstation. This solution is more common than you might thinkespecially with expensive scanners.

If your scanner has a standalone scanning utility, use it. If not, purchase a third-party scanning utility such as VueScan from Hamrick Software ($40 for the standard edition; $80 for the professional edition) or SilverFast from LaserSoft Imaging (with prices ranging from $49 to $499 depending on the specific product). A side benefit of using one of these third-party utilities is that they often provide more capabilities than do the scanning utilities bundled with scanners, and they are often easier to use. Once your scanning utility has made the scan, save it in TIFF format and open it in Photoshop for adjustments.

Using ImageKit drivers

If your scanner does have an ImageKit driver, youll be able to access it in Photoshop by choosing File -> Import -> Images from Device. In the resulting dialog box, youll see your scanner and any other devices that have images on them, such as an iPhone, iPad, or digital camera.

Tip: If you want to test your scanner before upgrading to Photoshop CS6, just launch Image Capture. If you can scan using Image Capture, youll be able to scan into Photoshop CS6.

Mountain Lion

While the above techniques work in Snow Leopard and Lion, they do not work in

Criminals hack Adobe certificate server

Criminals have broken into an Adobe server and provided two pieces of malware with a digital certificate that attest to them being legitimate code.

As a result of the breach, the company will revoke the certificate next Thursday and will update legitimate Adobe software that has been signed by the same certificate since July 10.

RELATED: In face of Flame malware, Microsoft will revamp Windows encryption keys 

MORE ADOBE WOES: Adobe releases six critical patches for Flash, AIR 

Adobe says that its legitimate software signed by the certificate is not at risk and that the hijacked certificate does not pose a general security threat.

"The evidence we have seen has been limited to a single isolated discovery of two malicious utilities signed using the certificate and indicates that the certificate was not used to sign widespread malware," Adobe says in an FAQ on the situation.

But there could be another shoe or two yet to drop, says Andrew Storms, director of security operations for security vendor nCircle. "It seems probable that this situation is the result of a breach of Adobe's software release process," Storms says in a written statement. "If that's the case there could be other serious problems that haven't been found yet."

Adobe says it is working with security vendors so their products will be able to detect the malware that was signed by the compromised certificate and protect end users from the malware.

Adobe didn't say exactly what the malware was capable of doing, but noted that in general using stolen certificates to legitimize malware is a tactic used by sophisticated adversaries carrying out targeted attacks.

"As a result, we believe the vast majority of users are not at risk," Adobe says in a blog. Once executed such malware can escalate privileges for compromised machines and move the malware from machine to machine within a network.

Products that need updating are:

" Adobe Application Manager - Enterprise Edition;

" Adobe Provisioning Toolkit Enterprise Edition;

" Report Builder - Digital Marketing Suite;

" SiteCatalyst Real-Time Dashboard - Digital Marketing Suite;

" Adobe Update Server Setup Tool;

" Flash Media Server 4.5.3;

" ColdFusion 10;

" Flash Player;

" Reader.

Also affected are three Adobe AIR applications - Adobe Muse and Adobe Story AIR applications as well as Acrobat.com desktop services that run on both Windows and Macintosh

The company has issued instructions here on how IT administrators can update affected products.

Hackers compromise Adobe server, use it to digitally sign malicious files

Adobe is taking steps to revoke the certificate used to create the signatures 

The story, "Hackers compromise Adobe server, use it to digitally sign malicious files," was inadvertently posted to the wire Friday during the editing process.

The story has been fixed on the wire, and the corrected paragraphs seven, eight and 19 follow:

Paragraphs seven and eight:

Brad Arkin, Adobe's senior director of security for products and services, wrote in a blog post that the rogue code samples have been shared with the Microsoft Active Protection Program (MAPP) so security vendors can detect them. Adobe believes "the vast majority of users are not at risk" because tools like the ones that were signed are normally used during "highly targeted attacks," not widespread ones, he wrote.

"At the moment, we have flagged all the received samples as malicious and we continue monitoring their geographical distribution," Botezatu said. BitDefender is one of the security vendors enrolled in MAPP.

Paragraph 19:

It's hard to determine the implications of this incident, because we can't be sure that only the shared samples were signed without authorization, Botezatu said. "If the password dumper application and the open-source SSL library are relatively innocuous, the rogue ISAPI filter can be used for man-in-the-middle attacks - typical attacks that manipulate the traffic from the user to the server and vice-versa, among others," he said.

Hackers compromise Adobe server, use it to digitally sign malicious files

Adobe is taking steps to revoke the certificate used to create the signatures 

The story, "Hackers compromise Adobe server, use it to digitally sign malicious files," was inadvertently posted to the wire Friday during the editing process.

The story has been fixed on the wire, and the corrected paragraphs seven, eight and 19 follow:

Paragraphs seven and eight:

Brad Arkin, Adobe's senior director of security for products and services, wrote in a blog post that the rogue code samples have been shared with the Microsoft Active Protection Program (MAPP) so security vendors can detect them. Adobe believes "the vast majority of users are not at risk" because tools like the ones that were signed are normally used during "highly targeted attacks," not widespread ones, he wrote.

"At the moment, we have flagged all the received samples as malicious and we continue monitoring their geographical distribution," Botezatu said. BitDefender is one of the security vendors enrolled in MAPP.

Paragraph 19:

It's hard to determine the implications of this incident, because we can't be sure that only the shared samples were signed without authorization, Botezatu said. "If the password dumper application and the open-source SSL library are relatively innocuous, the rogue ISAPI filter can be used for man-in-the-middle attacks - typical attacks that manipulate the traffic from the user to the server and vice-versa, among others," he said.