The borrowed scan contains almost 8 times the number of bits, Archie. That's why it looks clearer. Yours is only a 10 KB file.

My guess is there is nothing wrong with your scanner but that you saved it at a very low quality setting. If you're using Adobe, try using a quality setting of 5 or better for best results.

As a test, I saved Brian's scan at a quality of 0 and got a 20 KB file, still larger than yours. It's the one you see displayed below. You probably are also not using the max number of color bits.

Your scans have looked fine in the past. I'm guessing you've changed a parameter somewhere either in the HP scanning software or in the Adobe program that actually saves the file to disk.

DonL