# Help scanning Canon mp620 to pdf



## davefiboness (Apr 12, 2011)

I have a Canon mp620 and am trying to scan a document to a pdf. The only options I have are jpeg, tiff, or png. I am running windows 7 (64 bit). I already checked the Canon download website. Any ideas on why I can"t access this option?

Thanks in advance


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## pip22 (Aug 22, 2004)

PDF is a proprietary format owned by Adobe, so if Canon wanted to include "Scan to PDF" or "Save as PDF" in the scanner output options, they would have to pay a hefty licence fee to Adobe. This extra cost would in turn increase the retail price of such scanners, making them less competitive than scanners which didn't have that feature (a feature which would probably not be used anyway by many people).

The jpeg, tiff and png file formats are non-proprietary & therefore free to use.

You can add "Scan to PDF" to your scanner's abilities but that involves buying commercial software such as this:
Scan to PDF Software - Document Scanning Software - Windows 7 Scanner Software for Vista and Windows 8


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## gefiltehorn (May 11, 2011)

pip22 said:


> PDF is a proprietary format owned by Adobe


No so. According to Wikipedia's entry on the PDF format:



> Originally a proprietary format, PDF was officially released as an open standard on July 1, 2008, and published by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO 32000-1:2008.


Therefore, Canon is at liberty to provide PDF versions of scanned documents without running afoul of licensing issues. Why Canon failed to provide this feature is anyone's guess.


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