OK folks, I need some advice and information.
I've got myself a decent scanner, and I've started to scan some of my 35mm BW negs, many of which have not been printed. And I have (so far) an A4 printer with a continuous-flow BW ink system, which works very well.
And scanning, as a test, some negs that I have already got 20x16 inch bromide prints from, and making side-by-side print comparisons, I realise that I need the kind of controls - mainly dodging and burning-in - that I had in the darkroom.
No doubt Photoshop will do this, but I'd be paying a lot of money for a lot of features that I just don't want, or need, so I'm not willing to go that way.
I have PSE v.6, but almost the only use I make of it is for printing M8 files processed in C1, or in RPP.
Can I do basic dodging and burning in PSE, maybe using graduated layers, for example (showing my almost complete ignorance here)? I can't find this in the Help file. There seems to be a v.8 now out (I use a Mac), but that's maybe no improvement. Or is there some software that is designed for people like me, who are not interested in gimmicks?
I bought, optimistically, a copy of Iris, which looked promising, but it's not that stable, and the company seems to have lost interest in it, so that seems to be a dead-end.
Any suggestions?
David