Scanning old b/w photos

[hunner]

I have a very big number of old black and white photographs which I wish to save to disc. I have a Photosmart 2575 All-in-One. Is there a way with this or other device where I can scan the photos in a way which is not too tedious or time-consuming?
What is the best software to use if I want to touch up the photos?

[pug100]

Scanning is unfortunately a time consuming business, especially if you need to re-touch each one individually. You could pay to have it done but it will cost a bit due to your re-touch requirements. Try your local camera shop or places such as Klick (Spielmanns) or Jessops to get an idea of price.
There are some free software tools to manipulate your photos such as IrfanView and Picasa.

http://www.irfanview.com/

http://picasa.google.com/

Or if money is no object and you want the best then try Photoshop by Adobe.

[vehelpfulguy]

The HP Photosmart 2575 does seem to have a scanner.

When you got the printer there should have been a software CD with it that contained all the software for the printer.

Assuming you have the software installed then scanning is very simple.

Place the photo face down on the printer screen (this is often under the thin lid). Put it in the correct position (on of the corners).

Open up the HP software and find a "scan" option (look in the book that came with it if you cant find it).

When you select "scan" then the printer will fire up and scan the picture in which can then easily be saved as a jpg file.

There are various scan settings so you may need to play around for a while to get the best quality.

[vehelpfulguy]

There is some advice here from HP, including a "how to use" section.

If you select that you see one of the options is Scan.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?pro duct=441240&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&submit.y=5&subm it.x=11&lang=en&cc=us

You can also download software and manuals from there if you have not got them.

[wildwood]

In case you didn't know.... save them on a 'write once' CD or DVD, not a rewritable one. They are a lot safer with retaining the data than the rewritable ones.

[wildwood]

Oh, and if your main purpose is to save the images for storage, it will be a lot quicker to scan them if you put several photos on the glass bed, in fact as many as you like as long as they don't cover each other of course. You should be able to do four 6x4s in one scan so that goes a lot faster. It just means that you will be saving them as 4 photos in one but they can easily be cropped back to their original size if you need to print them out.