Hmmm...think grain is winning in this one (especially around the mouth/teeth area). Grain on the negative not that bad. -=>Donald

Try this...maybe... -Open the original in photoshop. -Convert it to LAB color. -In the channels...use a gaussian? blur of about 6-10 on both the A and B channels. -On the Luminosity channel, use noise>despeckle. -then convert it back to RGB. -then do your adjustments. -then a bit of "smart sharpening". -THEN scale your image down to viewing size. see if that does any good. BTW....I'm making a set of Photoshop actions....

nplus - Thank you. That's a technique I've used for color scans (especially to get "blue pixel" noise out of low light shots), but don't think it works in this case. The A & B channels are blank (actually, they'd be a single medium grey color). If I remember correctly, A channel is green/red and B is blue/yellow; don't think they correlate in b&w. -=>Donald

cool....just thought I'd throw that out there.....

And it's really appreciated. You never know when someone will say something that clicks that lightbulb over your head on. :) -=>Donald