Printed photographs are ephemeral. That’s a fact of life. Chemicals react and images fade in time, so care must be taken to preserve precious memories. A way to do this is by digitizing the photos thru scanning, and when it comes to this arena, nothing beats VueScan. Developed by Hamrick Software, VueScan is compatible with all scanners ever built, regardless of brand, model or date of manufacture. It’s even compatible with all versions of Windows, up until Vista. Novices will appreciate the wizard that can automate the entire scanning process. However, there are also advanced settings for the most demanding graphic artist, which gives complete control over DPI, to bit depth, to color balance and exposure. VueScan supports standard JPEG, TIFF, and Adobe's DNG format. It also has the ability to perform multiple passes, combining them for a better result. Some argue that there’s no need to be fussy about scans, as one can always use an image editor to make corrections. This is may be true, but if the original image is trash to begin with, even Photoshop can’t save you. It’s always better to start with a nice, clean, vivid image, and you can get this with VueScan.