Hi, Hilmar.

>I am scanning lots of documents for a client, and somebody suggested to use JPEG 2000 format, instead of JPEG. Now, I understand that these typically take up less space for the same quality; but how about compatibility? For instance, some of these images are destined for distribution on a CD, and they should work in the major browsers. Also, to give another example, some pictures might end up being imported into PowerPoint presentations.

If you're scanning black and white documents, or at least documents with just a few colors, then avoid JPEG or other lossless compression format altogether, and go for something crispier like GIF or PNG. GIF in particular is widely supported.

In general, scanned documents use to be stored in TIFF format, which has a set of special features that many document management sofware use, like multipage files. However, if you plan to set the collection for use with a browser (as your message suggests), then GIF could be better. Also notice that Irfan can be used as a document viewer on a CD, with several options as thumbnails, slide-show, etc.

Best luck,