Introduction
So, you've now got your perfect pictures on print then eh? Think your're going to get perfect results then? Not neccessarily! There are two indgredients needed to get good web photos. Good Hardware and Software, and the right application of the tools.

The techniques to get good results are explained very well in Henk Nous's website. So, rather than repeating the information there, I'll focus on the features of good scanners and image editors. Scanners come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The most common scanner is the flatbed. Handheld scanners and Slide scanners also exist but flatbeds is what I have experience of.

Scanners
Flatbeds come as cheap or as expensive as you like. The cheaper ones come with features that appear very similar to expensive scanners. They'll boast about 32bit colours, 1200dpi resolution and all that. There seems to be a belief that the higher these numbers, the better the scanner. What rubbish! It's debatable whether you can see the difference between 24bit and 32bit colours. 1200dpi resolution is only really needed when you want to print out a very large picture - web photos don't need this resolution.

At the current time though, 32bit colour depth at 1200dpi are standard features for scanners. So what's a bad scanner? You need to try out the scanners in the shop (or read magazine reviews). A slightly blurred picture is one feature of a cheap scanner. Sharpness of pictures has nothing to do with resolution, it's to do with how well the scanner optics focus the image on to its CCD's.

A decent scanner does this

Which picture do you prefer?

In addition to blurred pictures, colour balance is another feature of cheap scanners. The colours sometimes appear faded - some scanners give results that are too dark. All these features of cheap scanners can be compensated for by good image editing software. Editing and correcting images though, won't perfect the picture and in any case, simply takes too long if you have many photos to scan. Good image editors are still useful when you have a good scanner though as the next paragraphs will show you.

Image Editors
When putting photos on the web is all you want to do, then all the features you need are pretty basic. Resizing images, sharpening images, sometimes adjusting brightness and contrast. These are basic tools and they're the same on all image editors right? Wrong!

Resizing a picture with a cheapo editor comes out often with severely compromised results compared with better ones on the market. Cheaper software can deliver results that have jagged edges. This is due to the software not having anti-aliasing. Anti-aliasing slightly blurrs the image. Cheaper editors with this can blur the picture too much.

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Sharpening tools are the final deciding factor in image quality. The wrong sharpener can give results with jagged edges and a "noisy" picture.

Finally, when dealling with a large number of images, you often want to be able to process them quickly and easily. The design layout makes all the difference. Paint shop Pro gives a wonderfully simple interface while Photodeluxe gives a cumbersome "idiot's guide" way of doing things.