Webb,
I'm at a loss about your scanner and the results fed into photoshop - Usually scanning software offers you you choice of resolution and size of finished image which should be able to be varied to any combination you want to produce a scan of about the size, resolution and file size you want - and that depends on it's ultimate use, since once a bitmap is created the detail is cast in concrete - you can increase resolution in photoshop but it will not add more detail or clarity, just increase the size of the file ( Not necessarily the physical size but the "storage" size.)
In other words, if you're scanning a true photo with the idea of publishing it in a magazine which will be printed at 133 lines per inch you should scan the photo to be actual finished size at a resolution of twice that of the final line screen of the job - article to be printed at 133 lpi - scan at size at 266 dpi
Scanning and prepping for the internet is different - and these are general rules of thumb -
Most monitors display their images at 72 dpi - pretty low - what makes them look good or poor is the display setup you use - if your monitor is set up to display 640 pixels wide x 480 pixels high a 72 dpi image sized to 640 x 480 pixels fills the screen but appears sorta blocky and pixellated.
If the monitor settings are upped to 1024 x 768 pixels the image appears smaller on the screen but much smoother because the pixels appear much smaller
So if you're scanning for the web you should set the scale of the scanner to "Pixels" as opposed to inches or millimeters and roughly calculate how big you want the image to be ( taking into consideration most users' display res, which hardly anybody I know ( Even accountants who don't deal in images often) runs their monitor at 640 x 480) and scan it accordingly - an image of 500 x 500 pixels will appear to fill half the screen of a monitor set to 1024 x 768 pixels - so thats probably too large physically - the smaller you make the image the higher the resolution you can make it without a huge increase in file size.
If you look at my photos on the Flickr sight These are all digital photos rubbed down from their original form - I shoot at the highest res setting of my 3.2 megapixels camera - that results in a huge physical size photo - 28" wide by 21" tall! but at 72 dpi (File size of about 10 megabytes) - they look great on the screen, but you really have to zoom out to see all of them - I use Corel Photopaint ( Same tools as photoshop) and I "Resample" (same as resize) the photos to 7" x 5" at 200 dpi - this drops the file size to about 4 megabytes, but the quality is still gangbusters.
Then I place them in Adobe Illustrator document and optimize them to file size as I outlined earlier in this thread - Now you have a 5 x 7 photo at 200 dpi with a file size of whatever you want - about 100 k is what Basil wants as a limit for downloads and attachments and the quality is still great! Dealing with images for the web the main issue is speed of downloading for other viewers.
If you don't have Adobe Illustrator you should consider purchasing a copy - It can be really useful in a lot of ways other than optimizing photos - Doing your resume, publishing articles featuring your photography, etc.
You can generally find this software on sale at Ebay cheap but the catch is smetimes you don't get the manuals with the cheapie software - just the cd.
A better solution is to go to Adobe's website
www.adobe.com
and see if they are offering a Scholastic Version of the software - I'm almost positive they do - and it'll be at about 1/4 the price we poor non-students pay - all you need is a valid highschool; or college ID and maybe a letter from the teacher of an art course - If you're not enrolled or taking classes I'm fairly sure you know somebody who is that would be willing to make the purcase for you.
Anyway, I hope that now that I have thouroughly confused you on these issues you'll continue to work on what can be a great occupation for you and NEVER stop tinkering and playing "what if" with your photos and computer.
PS - if your interested in seeing my photos, which in no way are they half as nice in an artistic sense as yours, you can see them here
https://www.flickr.com/photos/screenprinter/
This will give you some idea of how they wind up, quality wise, when you go through the procedure of optimizing I told you about - and you'll get a peek at my family, pets and hobbies.
Bob M
Hey Guest!
Hey - did you know if you click on the title of a thread it will take you to the first unread post since you last visited that thread?
but were afraid to ask: 
STOP!! Never post your email address in open forums. Bots can "harvest" your email! If you must share your email use a Private Message or use the 
smilie in place of the real @
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