Hi Jill,
It sounds like your images were automatically moved to your Deleted Images folder because you had not signed up for a paid plan that includes image hosting. If you sign up for a paid plan, such as the Starter plan you mentioned, the images on your Deleted Images page should automatically be restored and returned to your Manage Images page within a few hours.
If you select a paid plan and your deleted images are not restored automatically, I recommend contacting our customer support team using the form on the following page of our site: http://www.auctiva.com/help/requesthelp.aspx
-Mike