JR added these comments in the current discussion du jour ...

JR, from what I have heard since coming here just a few months ago,
just about anything at all that floats is on-topic enough to post,
so please do unless you also mean your father's pics are also
"inappropriate". Too bad you don't have the original photos as
modern technology might be able to increase the quality of already
good scans.

These scans *are* of the original photos... I spent some time in
paintshop "working" some of them, but the original camera was a
cheap model anyway...

OK. Then, why are they so noisy? Maybe because the originals were grainy,
perhaps from a high-speed film and/or print paper? I should have
clarified my question in the beginning. I'm hardly criticizing the
photography whether it was a good or not so good camera nor your efforts
as a scanner. What actually caught my eye was the large size in KB of the
images which I recognized as coming from the noise. Scanners convert
either half-tone printing process "dots" or silver halide film negs and
prints grain as geometrically random noise in the scan, which I'm sure
you know how to control with descreening at scan time and various noise
reduction techniques in PS or other graphics app.

--
HP, aka Jerry

"If it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck"