IdaClaire, such interesting photos. I'm glad to hear you're preserving them. I've scanned a lot of photos, some very old, negatives, slides and tin types. Plus all of our family photos taken over the years. Boxes and boxes, most not yet scanned. I had to ser that project aside for a while, but found it very rewarding. I just had a simple HP flatbed scanner and Photoshop. For people doing a lot of scans, there is equipment that will do batches and much faster. with Photoshop, I could crop, adjust the hue, contrast, saturation and remove or fix some of the artifacts (like your dots). Mold can create "foxing" and many album materials like plastic can leave marks, encourage mold, cause the photos to adhere to the plastic. Cellophane tape leaves brown marks. Inks can flow and transfer to other photos and leak to the image. Nowadays there are special archival quality materials that are kind, but in years past, these were not likely to be (readily) available. You might want to look into a preservationist as well as a scanning service, especially for any photos that are rare. The third photo down looks like a "Rough Rider". My grandfather was a Rough Rider, joining when he was 16 yo (fibbed to join). I have a bunch of photo from that era -- some showing all the tents where they trained (Florida). The men wore various types of "uniforms" -- apparently cobbled together from former campaigns. The uniform on the last chap does look like it belongs in a marching band; or possibly a conductor or circus performer. You might want to run that past an historian, or theatre production person. Someone at your towns historical society might be a good resource. When I was scanning a lot of old black and white family prints from those little booklets the photo shop used to put the 120 prints in, I got a huge kick out of enlarging them on my display screen. A regular wool skirt came alive with memories when I zoomed on it. I could see the flecks of colored wool dots amid the charcoal and found that I could remember that skirt of my mothers in detail and with that came a flood of memories and associations I was not informed of by just viewing the 3x3 inch gray toned glossy print. Now I want to post some of my photos and ask questions! So interesting.

I know. I first teared up where Barack is touching the little boy's face. I teared up at all the photos with children. There were some funny ones too. He may not have been a perfect president, but he is a great man. I'm grateful to have lived during his presidency, an extraordinary time in history.

Hah! No, just me and I'm well over 10. Anyway, it is a good thing because the kitchen is TINY--and 100 years old. So here's my question! When you look at the album I posted, can you also click around and see my account settings and all the other photo albums I have posted on google photos?? I continue to see my account settings in the top right corner of what I posted above, along with the possibility of seeing my other albums. But I don't know what you see and whether only the account holder sees the account settings! Thanks for checking!

The label thingys are from a company in Australia that supplies chain stores. Some of the "IDs" are a bit suspect though.... This long leaf one do you mean? Apparently it's meliflua. This thing get's seriously long heavy leaves! I've only had this one for about 4 months. It's grown such a long vine. Will have to see how it goes in Winter. wait, is fraterna a type of meliflua?