I've found having the right scanner with the right settings has made a huge difference in the presentation of our site photos, including those scanned from our yearbook, and photos, slides, and negatives sent to me by classmates.

I cannot recommend the Epson Perfection V500 Photo Scanner highly enough. It scans photos, negatives, and slides, producing flawless .jpg files. After experimentation, I've found the following settings yield the best photos --- Mode: Professional; Image Type: 24-bit color; Resolution: 300 dots per inch; Unsharp Mask level: High.

This scanner is reasonably priced at about $160.

Scott--couldn't agree with you more! I paid about 100 for my Epson Perfection V200 about 5 years ago--scanned in all my family photo albums & thousands of other things, at least 20,000 images and still going strong. It has great speed and ease of use and would be lost without it.