My scanner likes to leave funny lines when I scan photos. It's a Microtek Scanmaker i320. It seems to do it no matter what resolution I set it to.

You can see what I mean on this picture here.
Look at the flower on the right side. The highest resolution is easiest to see.

how old is said scanner and is it still under warranty - maybe some fault in there somewhere.

The scanner is less than a year old. Should still be under warranty.

What resoulution do you scan at?

Ususally 200-400 ppi.

You sure that the scanner is not picking up the lines from the prints themselves. Usually 4x6 prints will have lines that are not noticeable without magnification.

Actually, I'm in no way sure that the scanner isn't picking up lines from the pic. I don't think it's the prints though. For example, when I scan images that have dark areas (like my photos from school dances) there are definite bars in the dark areas. In this one you can see the bars on my suitcoat.

*edit* I'm afraid you'll have to copy the link and then paste it into the navbar. Angelfire doesn't like other sites linking to it :(

I tried copy-paste and it does not work:-( As a test you could try rotating the image 90 degrees and scan again to rule out the lines on the print that I suggested might be the cause. When I brought my Canon scanner home I had to immediately remove the glass and clean the bottom. There was a very light coating of wax that gave the glass a slight milky color.

As an experiment, you should scan something that was not printed (has colored areas that are known to be continuous). If those come out looking fine then the problem is with an interferance effect caused by the tiny dot patterns used in most mechanical printing processes. Some scanners are better than others at getting rid of these patterns, and my guess is that your's just isn't very good.

You could also try uninstalling and reinstalling the software. I had that problem for a while and that fixed it.

@caedes - It seems that that might be the case. The images from "Poerio Creek" I developed myself the old fashioned way. They don't show this dot pattern. I'll have to ask for one of those Photo CDs next time. That should get rid of the dot pattern.

@mayne - The copy/paste link didn't work? Try opening a new browser window and pasting the link there. Otherwise, I have no idea :-P

@Morwyn - I'll try reinstalling sometime today and get back to you.