There was a thread here a while back about scanning color negatives and removing the orange mask. I've been using a utility from Hamrick Software - http://www.hamrick.com/ called VueScan, which does a real nice job. It's cheap. Check if it works with your equipment. [My slide/film scanner is an old Nikon LS-1000, which is a good scanner, but the software that came with it was pretty bad. The newer Nikon SW is supposed to be real good. No upgrade.] Let me know how the flatbed works out. I usually scan negatives at 2700ppi, and then scale in PShop.