When you scan these photos you should play around a bit first to get comfortable with the concept. Once you feel comfortable you should scan as bitmaps (.bmp) rather than jpeg (.jpg) because the quality is better. Increase the scan size so you are creating a 2 or 3 megabyte scan. Then if you wish to print or fix any tears, bends or other damage you have a nice sized file to work with. Marooma's link shows you have a flat bed scanner, great. You can set them up to scan square off the bed with that scanner. I have an HP flat bed scanner, it was given to me as mine died. But HP seem to want to control too much, hopefully you can set yours how you want it not how HP feels you should do them. (I need to get at it and see what I can really do before I bad mouth mine anymore) DO NOT scan in black and white as the results are far too stark, you will not be happy. Use full colour scanning, this is where the playing to start is so important because you can try various settings until you feel comfortable with the output. You could try duotone or greyscale just to see what it creates for you. Do you have any damaged photos?

No, flatbed scanners can't be counted on to accommodate negatives. You need to find one that has settings and physical properties that will allow negative scanning. Scanning negatives requires backlighting. I was recently on the phone with a Canon techie, and he mentioned that my scanner was so great because it takes negatives of different sizes, and it was the only one Canon made that would do that. Unfortunately, it's not being manufactured now. I took a look on Amazon and found this one, which will scan slides, negatives and medium-format panoramic film up to 6 x 22 cm. I usually have the negative holder on my scanner set to an opening of 2x3". If I want to scan a 2x2" negative, I just set it in the opening, leaving blank space around it. The preview will come up as a black rectangle, but if I draw a crop box inside the rectangle, my image will show up. I can then adjust the crop to include what I want before I click Scan. Perhaps the DPReview people can recommend other scanners. I'm also wondering if you could use a light box to "scan" the negatives with your camera. Scanning is basically the same as taking a picture. I've handled some slides this way. Because these slides were damaged (mounted under glass and now stuck to the glass--and even worse in some cases), and because I'm not using a tripod, the results aren't wonderful. But I think I could do a lot better if I put some thought into this and started out with better slides.

Tried changing settings and TIF seems slightly better than JPG for saved file. Basically it seems that as it acquires the picture, it self-adjusts the brightness and that results in sort of a partial over-exposure that washes out some colors. Doing some research, this scanner is only 10 bit color instead of the 48 that seems to be necessary. I guess its better than nothing ....

Never mind, thanks. I just figured it out. Invert!