I bought Serif PhotoPlus 5 (and other Serif products) very cheap. All the manuals are on the CD, and one of the demo pics is a "before and after" photo. I've used a few other paint apps from time to time, and I know the basics of things like the clone tool and adjusting contrast/brightness/gamma and so on. I'm thinking particularly of a B/W photo with creases and dog-eared corners, but I'll probably get a few old family pix to fix if word gets around. Did I say "a few"? Mom and Dad have literally hundreds, going back to c 1900--I'd better keep quiet!

I don't have as much time as I'd like (and I'd spend most of it on ther things!), so I'm not expecting to become an expert in the next couple of weeks; still, I'll happily accept such crumbs as may fall from your table.

Steve