Digital BW, The Print

I post this to this list as you are the most elite like I am aware of
in these matters. Almost all of the scanning I do is with a film
scanner, but the rare instance of some treasured family photos that
are over 50 years old are now briefly with me for flatbed scanning.

I am using a good quality Epson Expression 636 flatbed, with VueScan
and alternately the Epson 3.42a TWAIN directly into PS 7. In Vuescan
24bit and 48 bit color and 24 bit and 48 bit B&W. Likewise TWAIN into
PS 7. Overkill, I know, but I am trying everything so as not to have
to hand color at the outset.

Regardless of what I do, to this point, I get a white translucent
covering to the scanned digital file, over some of the image. Perhaps
70% of the image. This over the portions of black that seem to have
been ?hand painted? on the original photo paper.

I note the actual BW photo, which was apparently HAND
enhanced/?painted?, by, I am told, a WWII European refugee who set up
a photo studio and did the enhancements in an old world manner of
which I am not familiar.

The likely enhancements/paint portions, when viewing the BW photo on
an angle, show a different (shiny) reflective capacity to the
remainder of the photo, and this is what I have the impression is
causing the white-ish equivalent of dried soapy white translucence in
the digital scan file preview and image.

Before I give up and start attempting to hand color in Photoshop, I am
posting this in case one or more of you wise experts knows of a way to
mitigate or eliminate the presumed reflective anomaly, which is
causing the white translucence over the part of the photo that were
hand tinted with a perhaps silvery paint, of which I am seeing in the
digital scan file.

I wish to be able to do the scan and have the BW (or color file) end
up without the translucence and the blacks be ? on the digital file ?
black.

Thanks, I look forward to any responses.

J. F.  Johnson