Wasn't there some kind of FAQ or helpful hints, somewhere here? Just thinking of that because of some recent posts and eBay where people could use that. Best part was the explination of the different types of scanners and which have true color. Or maybe it was a coin site? (and I'm just lost...)

IrfanView does it all: http://www.irfanview.com/ free, has scanner integration for any TWAIN device. 300 dpi is a starting point

Photoscape has some interesting crop features, like creating a pseudo round crop easily: http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/index.php also free