Hey Dup,
I found that the photo editting software that came with my old HP scanner was very, very good for and very, very easy to use.
I altered some very cool pictures, to include eliminating people behind my subject and replacing them with a clone of the wall above them.
You could spend $100 on software alone, or on a scanner and software. And honestly, I still like that editing suite for it's simplicity v. the Photoshop 7.0