Is there a scanner that would scan several several images at once but generate a separate jpeg or pdf for each of the images?

I ask as I am about to tackle some large boxes of photographs, going back about 40 years, and dread the idea of doing them one at a time with my elderly (but in great shape) Epson Perfection V500 scanner.

If you use VueScan software there is an Input option to auto repeat at a specific time interval. Perhaps you could use that so that once you have laid out numerous photos on the scanner bed, in between auto scans you reset the scan area. That would produce multiple files.

So, if I understand....I would:

1. Place several photographs on the scanner glass
2. Set the input area to scan one of the photographs
3. Run a scan
4. Change the input area to scan another of the photographs
5. Run a scan

Et cetera....

A similar solution that would likely save time:

1. Lay out a group of photos on your scanner
2. Scan at high resolution
3. Save the file
4. Open it in your photo editor of choice
5. Select an image and copy it into the clipoboard
6. Open a new file from the clipboard
7. Save the new file
8. Repeat steps 5 through 7 for each of the photos in the scan.

That would save scanning time and you would have the opportunity to touch-up or edit each of the images as part of the process.

We appear to have been thinking in sync across the miles. The system I came up with (scanning with the Epson software, and editing with GraphicConverter 8.8.3) was:

• Lay out a group of photos on the scanner
• Scan at high resolution
• Save the file
• Open it in GraphicConverter
• Choose an image and crop it
• “Save as” with a different name
• Repeat the above for each image

GraphicConverter allows me to achieve your suggestion of saving scanning time and touching up as I go.

Another advantage with GraphicConverter is that it leaves the original multi-image scan intact. Therefore I can continue cropping and “Saving as” until all images are saved as individual shots. With the original multi-image scan remaining intact, I can go back to it and re-crop, should I want to "start from scratch" with a touched-up image.

But I still have a couple of questions:

Scanning Resolution: Using the Epson software and its presets (e.g. Unsharp Mask “On” at medium) I’ve scanned at 400 dpi and at 600 dpi but found that the 600 dpi scans are darker. Why would that be? If the images are not likely to be enlarged, is there any advantage to a higher resolution scan? P.S.: I have no idea what Unsharp Mask even means.

Saving as jpegs: GraphicConverter offers two choices (JPEG 2000 (.jp2)) or (JPEG/JFIF (.jpg, .jpeg). What’s the difference?

According to Wikipedia: "By ordering the codestream in various ways, applications can achieve significant performance increases. However, as a consequence of this flexibility, JPEG 2000 requires codecs that are complex and computationally demanding. Another difference, in comparison with JPEG, is in terms of visual artifacts: JPEG 2000 only produces ringing artifacts, manifested as blur and rings near edges in the image, while JPEG produces both ringing artifacts and 'blocking' artifacts, due to its 8×8 blocks."

Which may leave you as confused as you were before. In my roaming around the Internet of images I see very few (none?) images in the JPEG 2000 format, but your mileage may vary. Perhaps their use is more within applications than outside of them.

So, I did a quick test, saving an image in each of the formats. To my eye, there was no difference, although the JPEG 2000 file was larger....1.8 MB versus 1.6 MB. Apple Photos accepted both.

The sizes raise a new question. The PDF document, which contains the four images, is only 566 KB. However, after cropping and converting to JPEG, a single image is three times as large as the PDF. I thought that compression made JPEGs inherently smaller than PDFs. What gives? Is it a function of the GraphicConverter conversion?

EDIT: I've since found how to stay in the jpeg realm. Open in Acrobat and export the multi-image document as a jpeg. It doesn't have the convenience of keeping the original document after a crop, but that just means exporting once each for the number of scanned images.