[rrayner]

This seems an easy answer. If I look on Amazon for the other leaders in music notation software, I see:

Finale 2014 - $470
Sibelius 8 Professional - $504
Neuratron PhotoScore Ultimate 8 - $229.99
Notation Composer - $98.99

Finale and Sibelius do not have the feature you are talking about, unless I am missing by not digging deeply into the current releases. Neuratron is somewhat capable of doing what you are proposing (which I think would be wonderful), but if you want to easily and freely modify Neuratron's output, you need to export it to Sibelius to massage the content. Pretty expensive, and from personal experience, I have tried scanning both hand-written scores and professionally printed sheet music, and the output STILL needs a lot of massaging to make the music playable. I have had extended experience with that scenario: Neuratron to Sibelius to Notation Composer (via midi export) -- a tedious task and not very complete.

Neuratron to Notation Composer, skipping Sibelius, has not been very effective either. There is really no good software to do what you propose, unless I am living under a rock (which could be -- I would be happy to find out about something new I haven't heard about).

I own all four software products, even though I am not terribly fluent in the non-Composer apps. I have found Composer to be hands-down the best notation software out there. How much would I be willing to pay above the current Composer price? There is a large gap between less than $100 and the prices of the other apps, particularly if you want to include the Neuratron piece. In the $400 range, it would be very attractive, assuming the score-scanning capability, but I am assuming that you would like to target the $200 range.

Ralph Rayner