You make it look so easy! This is a great article/post for all those who want to show off their amazing garden arrangements.I agree with you, I think the roses draw my attention the most. Thank you for sharing the tips! Here is a link that might be useful: Garden Design

You really have 2 separate issues here. You have the scanning which is relatively easy and the photo repair which is more of a challenge but a whole lot of fun if you can become interested. Defining your "tons of photos etc" and what you want for a finished quality will determine the amount you are willing to pay for your scanner. When I first started a local company wanted $10 for the first scan and $8 for any others done at that time. Figuring that 6 and 4 are 8 and 2 is twelve I realised I could buy a scanner for the price of a dozen scans from the store. A good investment but in those days scanners were not as good as those around now. I have an HP4890 that will individually scan as many photos as I can get on the plate and I can adjust the settings for each scan. Great time saver. I also scan quite large files because you can always reduce the size with no degradation but you cannot successfully increase the size after the scan. The larger the file the better it is when you start photo editing, repairing those damaged shots. Anything above 3 megabytes file size worked well for me. During the scans I never bothered about colour intensity because that got taken care of when I brought them up in Corel PhotoPaint.

Followed this post with interest since I have wanted one of these scanners ever since I found out about them. On Jan 2, I purchased the one from HSN that scans both JPEG and PDF, after some research that model is only available at HSN. Anyway, I am pretty pleased with it. I scanned loose paper, page out of a book, a pattern (I sew), a page out of a magazine, and a photo. The scans to PDF are better than my old flat bed and much quicker. I have only done a couple of pictures and was not that happy with it, but my main focus was to scan my files and get rid of paper clutter. I think it will be perfect for that. There is a slight learning curve, for example start at the top not bottom of your page or the scan will be upside down. With a bit of practice, I was able to drag it at the proper speed and without movement to get a perfect scan. You can still read it but it has "waves" in it if you hesitate or wiggle the wand. Super easy to transfer to computer. No software involved. Just hook up with USB and it acts as a flash drive, review what you scanned, cut and paste to where you want it on your hard drive. Now if the product doesn't break down, I will be happy with my purchase. Hope this helps you if you are thinking about getting one of these scanners. Murphy

Susan, I just now saw this -- on page 4 of the forum, and it's nearly 1:30 a.m. so it's now Wednesday... I've never taken this scanner out of the box! So, I had to push all of the stuff off of the top of it (horizontal surfaces do NOT stay clean for more than about 10 minutes if I'm anywhere in proximity). The box has been on the floor under my desk for at least two years, but now that you mention it, it very well could be three (or four! - gads, I hope it hasn't been more than that, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised). Anyway, from what it says on the outside of the box (at least what I can see from this angle), it's a "Visioneer One Touch 9320 USB" Aha! The packing slip was still on the outside of the package (I ordered it online and it was delivered...) The ship date was 02/13/2004. My how time flies when you're having fun! Let's see... it has 400 x 3200 dpi optical resolution 48-bit Color (recognizes over 281 trillion colors); 5 Convenient OneTouch Buttons; Scans slides or a negative strip; Blazing fast Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Interface and cable (Compatible with USB 1.1 too!) Says it's Designed for Windows XP... The reason I chose this one is because it comes with the slide and negative adapter, and has other features that I wanted (at least at that time). My father was quite the photographer (always had a darkroom in the house); and I've got boxes and boxes of negatives and slides that I want to scan. When I bought this desk, I selected it specifically so I'd have a place to put the scanner. But, there isn't a clear horizontal space quite large enough for it right now. :-( Somewhere "out there" in the mess in the garage I have another scanner that I used to use (and it was very easy - you'll get the hang of it in no time at all), but that was with a different 'puter with Windows 98. When I went to Windows XP, I needed a new scanner, which is when I got the Visioneer... Guess this means I need to hold off on getting Vista, eh? ;-)