Great post Greg! I do exactly this process with my own photos! But I don't do the overlay with a b&w version of the image, just the original image; I'm going to give that a try, looks like it would give me a bit more depth as opposed to contrast with the way I do it now.
Since I use my little point-and-shoot with the self timer instead of hubby's SLR, I shoot in full manual (I picked my PnS specifically because of this feature) and leave the aperture at f/8 all the time so I don't have to pop in a focusing object, and then set the shutter speed myself. But anyone who wants to shoot something lower in aperture mode, like f/2 or f/4, you can place in a focusing object when you click the timer and then throw it out of the way when you move into frame so the right place gets blurred.
I also do minor photoediting as needed, almost always for things related to using a self-timer instead of a human photographer; small things like a hair that blew in my face right as the timer goes off or an unfortunately located clothing wrinkle that I happened while running into frame. Very very occasionally I will do heavier editing (usually to combine successful elements of different poses when I'm having a particularly non photogenic day), but for the most part I try to leave it alone and I would say 95%+ of my photos have no retouching.