Sane scanning and problems in reprinting

I'm still on Ubuntu, (no I haven't returned to main-line OS) and I'm feeling far more comfortable now though there's stil la lot to learn.

At the moment I have a scanning problem with Canoscan 9000F MarkII and gscan2pdf which scans my document and I can save it, so far so good.... but when I want to print it out the background is very light gray, not white as the original document. I have been told that this is due to the Sane drivers? Is there any way to make the background of a scanned document when reprinted, white?

The included "simple scan" program mostly refuses to complete scanning a page, almost always stopping about 3/4 of the way down the page.

Thanks for any ideas.