The specks you uncovered by Photoshop are obviously not stars, based on the fact that they change significantly in two photos taken in a short period of time. Stars couldn't do that. Therefore, the question must be, are they fake stars created by NASA, or mere artefacts of twiddling knobs in Photoshop. Since NASA never identified these specks as being stars, why would NASA include them at all? There would be no point in putting invisible stars into their photos, while claiming that stars didn't show up in them at all, in fact couldn't show up.
Therefore, the only logical conclusion is that they are not stars or deliberate fakes, they are artefacts of digitally manipulating the levels on multi-generation copies of the original photos until some pixels turn white.
If you still believe they could be stars, please explain your theory of why they change so much from one photo to the next. If you could relate the changes to the star field that actually would have been visible from the Moon at the time (with special equipment or by standing in deep shadow and letting one's eyes adjust), so much the better.