I too have had nothing but good experiences with Topaz.

Very simple. What looks good? The nice thing about digital is you can try one, and then try again. Post production is a matter of refinement.

Quite so.

In a word, ridiculous. That Earth is a sphere was known in classical times. See Eratosthenes, who calculated the circumference with great accuracy around 240 BC.

With all due respect, ridiculous. And the fact that the earth was a sphere was know in classical times. Check out Eratosthenes.

I really like it. You might experiment a bit with the contrast, however, and lighten the rocks a trifle.

A recent post on the camera:
https://themachineplanet.wordpress.com/2022/10/17/light-l16-computational-camera-trypophilia/

As to your second question: in my view either older Zeiss / Hasselblad or newer Fuji / Hasselblad are arguably better than Leica lenses. Personal preference.
I think it worth noting that on the stats the Hasselblad gives you more than the Leica except that the Leica gives you a higher maximum ISO. Do you have any lenses in either Hasselblad or Leica format? That, too, is a factor worth considering.

If I were making the purchase, it would be Hasselblad, hands down.

It was, I think, 2004, a Fuji Finepix S3 with interpolated 12 MP. Outstanding camera, great color rendition. I still have it, and use it. (My current camera is a Nikon D850.)

I do still shoot film.

I recently also had an outstanding customer service experience from Topaz. Excellent product, and excellent company.

I'm going to give rather a long answer to this. The short answer, if you are looking for a replacement for your Canon, is that this is the highest rated Canon all-in-one: https://shop.usa.canon.com/shop/en/catalog/pixma-ts9521c-wireless

This is the longer one: I have three scanners--an Epson V850 for medium format, a Nikon 4000 for slides, and a Canon Pixma 922 all-in-one which I bought at an estate sale for $20. Your choice depends very much on the quality of the output you want. An Epson V600 will be a very significant step up in quality from your all-in-one; I would suggest using Vuescan (www.hamrick.com) as the software. It has the immense advantage of creating .dng scans, which are far easier to edit than .jpgs or .tifs. Another alternative, depending on whether or not you have a digital camera, is to get a bellows unit for it with a slide holder and photograph the old slides. (That's the easiest way to do it.) The quality, particularly if you have a full frame camera, will be better than scanning with the V600.

Thanks for the info. I've been considering adding Luminar. Can you tell me how to PM you?

I've been digitizing film for over 15 years. How you go about digitizing slides will depend very much on what you want to do with the digital images. If you are simply looking to create a digital backup of well-loved family photos, and you have at many as, say, a few hundred, then your most cost effective route would be to use one of the many services to do it for you.

If, on the other hand, you want archival copies of important images, that is a different story. Others have mentioned the Epson flatbed scanners with photo capability, and they are a good alternative. The Plustek scanners apparently do not have the resolution they claim (see reviews at scandig.com) and they are apparently slow.

I have been using a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 for many years with Vuescan software for 35mm film. I haven't tried much 35mm on my Epson V850 as yet--I bought it primarily for medium format film. Nikon, unfortunately, no longer makes scanners, but they are readily available used, and there is a good repair person, http://www.shtengel.com/gleb/Scanners.htm. I suggest you read his page--I had my scanner into him this year for a tuneup. The quality from these scanners is very good. Here is an APS image I recently scanned:

Since I am archiving my photos, I scan them in 4000 dpi and 64 bit color (with an infrared channel). I save them in the.dng format, which makes color correction and editing in Photoshop much, much easier. I just got Topaz DeNoise AI, which is a good tool for getting rid of noise in scanned or digital photos.

Hope this helps. I must emphasize that this is from the perspective of someone who is a bit of a perfectionist.

The strategy of photographing the slides with a macro lens is also a good way to go. But it's slow. With the Nikon, you can get a slide feeder.