Every so often I poll this newsgroup to see if there is any new or
'undiscovered' software for improving photos. Stuff such as Neatimage for
reducing grain, human software autofocus, focus magic for fixing blur,
shadow illuminator for dark pictures and anything that will do a better job
of upsizing (photozoom) or downsizing resolution, polaroid dust and scratch
for automatically 'fixing' old photos.

True one can never really replace missing info but these utilities above can
do a damned good job of improving the real perception of a poor photo. Also
some can improve a picture automatically without lots of manual input.

So what is it that you use/recommend? Any new improved versions? Any hidden
gems that are undiscovered?

Presumably as computers become more powerful they can run increasingly
complex and 'intelligent' algorithms in a reasonable timescale.

Basically modern digital cameras do a good job but I have lots of old
scanned pics that need TLC.

Thanks