I had a service bureau do a drum scan of a transparency loaned by the Getty Museum and it took up 6M on a Zip disk. Flatbed scanners have the most to offer at an affordable price. A flatbed scanner makes it easy to scan photographs, letters, documents, pictures and pages in books. Please remember to observe the copyright laws when it comes to acquiring images from books and other print media. You must request re-publication rights from the owner of the image or text that you scan.
Bundled software makes it easy to do photo processing.
You can trim, resize, cut, paste convert, import and export image files by using a product such as Adobe Photoshop, Micrografix, Microtek's Scanmaker or Visioneer's PaperPort. Some budget scanners require you to buy the software separately. We recommend not only image software but also OCR programs such as Xerox TextBridge, which allow you to scan documents right from your word processor. This is an excellent way to manage your paperwork. Other software offers calibration tools for custom color-matching, but those are usually included with the hardware itself.