Perhaps someone with a similarly old scanner will benefit, though, if they are contemplating the jump to Big Sur. So, the DCP-7045N has a new lease of life and I apologise for asking an unnecessary question. But it turns out that installing the printer driver manually also works fine. That’s not the case in Big Sur, which is why I thought this might be the end of the line. Under previous versions of macOS I was accustomed to being able to add this device from the Printers and Scanners preference pane. Brother’s original main scanning app (“ControlCenter”) is 32-bit and so will not run, but all the other components (including /Library/Image Capture/Devices/Brother Scanner.app) seem to be OK. With some embarrassment, after reinstalling the original Brother scanner software I find that scanning directly to DT or Image Capture works fine in Big Sur. I’d like a duplex scanner with a sheet feeder and easy linking to DT, whether via the manufacturer’s own software or Apple’s. The Brother DCP-7045N has done me very well over the years, but perhaps it’s time for a replacement. I’m not sure about SANE, but again they don’t list many Brother models. They reckoned ExactScan was better, but support for Brother is lacking. VueScan claims to be able to help, though it’s fairly costly and tidBITS didn’t rate it very highly a year ago. What I didn’t expect was that there would be no fallback option such as TWAIN – though if I’ve misunderstood, and there is indeed a way to install Brother’s TWAIN drivers in Big Sur, I’d love to know. I knew the ancient app that shipped with my Brother DCP-7045N would no longer work.

The background to this is that I upgraded from Mojave to Big Sur without checking properly. With the loss of 32-bit apps, and now macOS 11, perhaps it’s time for a refresh? I’m asking because although there are quite a few discussions here on scanners, they all seem to be rather old. Can anyone please suggest a short list of scanners and scanning software that work well with Macs, DT and possibly Big Sur?

Vuescan for big sur