Y'all have been great with all your tips and comments. Every one of them has been greatly appreciated! Thanks, Carol! I must admit doing as you suggested crossed my mind more than once. Right now I am scanning in negatives rather than photos. The problem has been the quality of the negatives. While the celluloid itself is in superior condition, the images themselves are damaged with scratches, nicks, and the dreaded fingerprints in the smack middle of the frame that to me are such a distraction that I don't see the image. I'll most likely do what you suggest when I get around to scanning photos, and right now those are all safely stored in acid-free albums. Maybe once I get everything scanned, etc., I'll spend more time on getting the dark ones fixed better. The images that are on the above page are the best I could get them at the moment because they were extremely dark in the first place. If I got the faces to look "good", the background was all washed out. So I can definitely see the need for that! I use Historian for my photo editing and it doesn't use layers, etc. I did receive an editing software with my camera which I use to stitch together my panoramic photos, and I did notice I can do layer editing on that. Maybe I'll have the chance to experiment this summer. I must admit I never thought about doing that before. I use Historian right now, and have been happy with it to this point. I have seen many articles, etc., on Lightroom, which I must admit has captured my interest. I just checked it out and saw that it's only available in subscription through the cloud. Maybe at some point I may try a month just to see what it's like, but I'm such a dinosaur that I want my files on my desktop and EHD's. Doing a trial month will also be on my list for the summer. Thanks very much for the tip!
@QuiltyMom , sorry didnt realize you needed a subscription to Lightroom. I finally upgraded to the subscription in Nov but that is a new feature.
Jan - I just saw your first page and LOVE it!! Cannot wait for you to share more pages from this project with us.