I am looking for suggestions regarding which photo editing software might be a good choice to use for dealing with the issues to be described.

I inherited a large number of World War 1 B/W photographs taken by my grandfather. I want to get these scanned and edited with the possible idea of publishing them as a local history resource. I have attached 2 images to show what I am dealing with.

My main questions for this post are related to software, but I do know that I have to work on the quality of my scanning process. If anyone has suggestions on that aspect of this project, they would be appreciated as well.

Please look at the image of just the girl's head and notice the white spots, particularly on her lips and forehead. These are nothing that I can remove from the prints I have. They appear to be problems introduced when the prints were made, probably by dust of course. Can any software package automatically do a good job fixing spots like this? I am hoping to automate as much as possible since time will be a major factor for me. Also note in the full photo that there are lots(!) of white spots to deal with, so minimizing manual work would be strongly preferred.

My second problem might be helped by better scanning but I don't think scanning alone will solve it, thus an "automated" solution would be nice here too.

The attached scans don't show it well, but I have many prints where it appears that the silver has migrated to the surface of the print. When holding the print, sections can be seen where dark areas have a very shiny appearance to them. This shininess of course ends up appearing on the scanned images. Does anyone have thoughts on dealing with this issue?

I would like a discussion of the "best" way to go but bear in mind that I also have a funds issue so lower cost will also be a consideration to me in making a final decision.

Any and all comments from you more experienced folks will definitely be appreciated.

TIA

Paul Hurm
phurm@one.net