Reducing jpeg compression artifacts

I have a friend who wants me to print some photos from her recent wedding. The problem is that they were shot on her sister's p&s camera with jpegs, small size, a fair amount of compression AND to 8x10. Looking at the files I downloaded, I think I've got a major problem here. Any suggestions in CS2 for minimizing the artifacts and noise from upsizing and jpeg compression?

Thanks for any half whacked ideas

I guess convert to TIFF right away and work on those?

Fiddling with the despeckle filter on the R, G, and B channels individually might help.

Take a look at some of the noise reduction programs. I think Noiseware by Imagenomic has a feature for combating jpg artifacts

I'd also suggest trying some of the noise reduction programs. I have Neat Image and have used it to knock down the grain from friends P+S cameras at times. It's not great, but it makes an improvement. I'd play around with localized noise reduction too - perhaps only in areas that really need it. Depending on what size you're printint, you can get away with pretty heavy reduction, especially in shadow areas.

If you can't remove the artifacts, do the next best thing, disguise them by adding noise / grain to the image, and maybe even printing them in B+W. It could save a lousy file. Adding noise is an old trick to add "detail" and to disguise a weak printer or image.

The best solution would be to try to obtain the original files before anybody has messed with them. Is that possible? If not, Paintshop Pro has a neat dialogue called "Digital Camera Noise Removal". It targets only the noise and artifact type that you select and leaves the rest largely untouched. Perhaps someone close to you can loan you a copy. Versions 9 and 10 and 11 all have this feature.

Check out Alien Skin's Image Doctor. The demo looks promising.