Hi everyone. You'll be happy to know that I've managed to solve my earlier frustration. It appears that the following settings do the trick. thresholding grayscale brightness fifty, paper quality setting normal recognition engine omnipage. Now I'll have to scan all day tomorrow because when I tried to scan this thing in two page mode, and attempted to brake the spine one of the pages started to come out of its binding and we don't want that now do we? Speaking of that, I remember the one time I dared to take apart a seven hundred page paperback and scan it, I had border problems on every page, yuck! Does anyone feel like validating such a monster? I think I've cleaned up to page four hundred or so. I don't blame you if you don't. The book is The Rich Are Different by Susan Howatch. cheers, Julia