Simple Scan - Changing the default output File Type to PDF and improving Compression?

Is there a way to change the default output file type in the 'Simple Scan' software provided with Ubuntu 12.10 to be a PDF rather than a JPEG? And is it possible to modify the compression settings on the PDFs that Simple Scan outputs to be higher and so produce smaller file sizes?

Background: I use Simple Scan on Ubuntu 12.10 to scan multiple receipts to prepare for the Tax Season. I scan many hundreds of receipts at a time, so this is a very repetitive task.

Issue 1: Every time I scan a new document using Simple Scan, the software defaults the file format to JPEG, meaning that I need to change the output format from JPEG to PDF per scan. This is very repetitive and precisely the sort of user preference that Ubuntu is usually so good at accommodating via gconf or dconf settings, or other tweak tools.

Issue 2: I need to store my scans in PDF format with a high level of file compression. The output quality of the PDFs that are generated by Simple Scan is very high, meaning that the files that are output are too large to be emailed in bulk. I typically use an external script to later compress multiple PDFs in bulk but this can get messy and so I'd like to improve my workflow.

Any ideas please? Thanks in advance.

Solution 1:

I've answered my own question!

Selecting Scan > Text now creates PDF files by default that are compressed. My preference for 'Text' is persisted, meaning that I can now quickly perform many scans without needing to manually update my settings per scan.

The reason why Simple Scan was defaulting to JPEG format previously was because I was scanning as an 'Image' rather than as 'Text'. I didn't see that there were options under the main 'Scan' menu item to optimise for either 'Images' or 'Text'.