Image Help - - Civil War Diary

ss10001 · #1 11-30-2007, 12:19 PM

Hi! I'm new to the forum - am hoping I'm in the right place for help

I have a photocopy of a diary kept by my g-g-g-g grandfather during the civil war. The problem is that the diary was photocopied in the early 1980's and the photocopier wasn't great. The images are not good. I'd like to clean them up, if possible, but am not getting anywhere on my own (using Paint Shop Pro).

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!

Sherri

DCobb · #2 11-30-2007, 03:26 PM

The goal would be to separate the text from the background; however, the colors are very similar. I would imagine that if you had the original there are photographic techniques that would be able to separate the text from the background. I tried a few things and was able to separate the color cast from the typewritten area but was not really effective on the handwritten diary part. Other who have had more experience may be able to offer a solution.

dc

Mike · #3 11-30-2007, 03:56 PM

You might try converting to black and white, then trying to increase the contrast to a very high amount. I am not that familiar with paint shop pro but in PS thats quite easy.

DCobb · #4 11-30-2007, 04:41 PM

I did try converting the diary image to B&W using CS3 Black and White option where you can adjust the different colors. The red and yellow slider did change the color a little but both the text and background are virtually the same and changing one, I changed the other. I also used a forensic filter designed to separate colors. Was able to remove the photocopy color where the typing was but not on the diary side. There seems to be some yellow in the gray and I tried the page in the CMYK color space and setting levels to the yellow chan. did seem to reduce some of the color.

dc

Dave.Cox · #5 11-30-2007, 04:48 PM

I have a color deconvolution filter that is designed to separate colors, as dc suggests, however this image is too low resolution, so I didn't get very good results either. If you have a better image though, it might do some good.

ss10001 · #6 11-30-2007, 06:31 PM

I do have a much better scan, but had to reduce it to post it here. I've had the same problem everyone else had - the handwriting on the journal is so close to the discoloration on the pages that my software won't distinguish between the two. I'm not really worried about the typewritten part. I can always crop that out and then retype it and add it back later. I'm more concerned with fixing the actual journal page image. Is there a way to get a better image on here?

Thanks!

Mike · #7 11-30-2007, 08:38 PM

Not sure what you mean by "photocopy color"?

"There seems to be some yellow in the gray and I tried the page in the CMYK color space and setting levels to the yellow chan. did seem to reduce some of the color." If you had converted it to black and white, how did you get yellow in the gray? The gray should have the same values in all color channels.

Just for kicks, what are the values for the writing and the backgound (on average)?

jadams007 · #8 11-30-2007, 10:48 PM

this will take some time. I would try, like most post noted, converting to b&w, increase contrast. I might even mask the text putting on different background to have it show up better. I tried with image you have, ....I just hope you have a higher resolution than this...

DCobb · #9 12-01-2007, 09:04 PM

This is in response to Mike's post above. The original post was in RGB. Some of the things I tried were done in RGB, CMYK, and LAB. Not everything I tried was done after I converted the image to B&W. As I have stated in many of my posts, I am not a professional. I clicked on the gray with the eyedropper and when looking at the gray in the color picker it was in the yellow range. Was only experimenting to see if there might be something that could be used to separate the text from the background. If I read the color picker information correctly, then the yellow slider in the CMYK color space might have helped me. That was my thinking.

dc