Printer Stripes

[deadants]

I was confronted with this photo today with a request to make it look a bit newer, and possibly colour it. But as you can see it looks like it was printed on typing paper from a cheap printer leaving those vertical printer lines. Is there any kind of filter or technique to deal with this, besides the obvious rescanning the original.

deadants

[Caitlin]

Wel I would normally say Neatimage - it generally removes paper pattern quite well. (If you don't have it Deadants, there is a free trial version that works on jpg only)

But this image is so small, and there is no 'blank' section to sample from, which make it much harder. It works best if there is a section of the scan with no photographic detail, so it can sample the texture only.

I had a go with Neatimage anyway, and it has helped a bit. It would help a lot if the image scan was bigger though, as neatimage needs a reasonable number of pixels to sample from.

[deadants]

Hi Caitlin,
It has cleaned it up a bit but it is still a bit in your face, so to speak. Here is the link to the larger version on Rootschat.
http://tinyurl.com/83x8t

Do you have a link to neatimage so I can check it out?

deadants

[Jaime]

Hi deadants,

Here is the link to the Neat Image site:

http://www.neatimage.com/

Jaime

[Caitlin]

I agree deadants that this looks like a bad inkjet print. If the owner can get hold of the original I think we'll have alot more luck. I don't think neatimage can remove the banding entirely.

Otherwise all I can think of is to get the best out of neatimage, then use clone, blur etc to remove as much of the remaining banding as possible.

[deadants]

Thaks for the link Jaime, I have downloaded and installed it. It a great little plugin.

I have posted the request for a rescan of the original but the owner may no longer have access to it. But we will wait for the reply and see what happens. In the mean time, I will attempt to colorize it as an exercise just in case the original does not eventuate.

deadants

[deadants]

Ok Guys, Here's my temporary colourized version. If I can get hold of the original It should come up heaps better. Also when I do a save for web it tends to become lighter, so I try to make my photos a little darker before I do a save for web.

deadants

[cardmnal]

If you want to get rid of those lines try this.

Duplicate layer. With your duplicate layer selected nudge your image about 3 pixels either left or right.

add a layer mask and fill with black. With the mask targeted paint with white along the lines with a small brush

although tedious, this should work.

If I have more time tommorow I'll give it a shot.

[deadants]

Thanks for the tip cardmnal, I'm onto right now. I'll let you know what happens.

deadants

[Kraellin]

deadants,

i've seen this happen with scanners also, though in this case, it does look more like a printer thing.

besides the fixes already posted, you can also try 'median filter', 'texture preserving smooth', and 'salt and pepper filter'. these are all 'noise' filters in paint shop pro (psp). i dont know what the equivalents are in p-shop. even a 'despeckle' might remove a bit of it.

other than that, i'd prolly take a selection of the ground portion of the image and simply use a noise filter without worrying about clarity. and on the bodies of the folks i'd tend to use 'clone', 'push' and 'smudge'.

ok, having just said all that, i copied the pic to my drive and also tried 'automatic scratch removal'. there are several settings for this in psp and i was able to mostly remove the white lines. however, this can be somewhat erosive of other desired things, so i think a bit of judicious automatic scratch removal and hand work would be in order here. i also had some success with the salt and pepper noise reduction filter. the problem with all of them is a reduction in clarity, however, but, you might just mask off things like the heads before filtering and see how that worked.

it's definitely a tricky image. will be interested in seeing how it goes.

K.

[deadants]

Well this is a nightmare. The more I try to fix it the worse it gets. I have tried Cardmnals metod with limited success but I think it's a case of lack of experiance. Has anyone had any luck at all or is it just too labour intesive?

deadants

[philbach]

Well I took your image and ran it through the neat image filter.
I then copied that layer and used the overlay blending mode and used an emboss filter with the light at 0 degrees.

[deadants]

Hi Phil,
I aso tried the method you have employed but thought it was strarting to blur to much. Plus the stripes although dimminished are still there.

I have sent a colorized version to the client and they seemed quite happy the way it had come out compared to his original degraded copy. So now it is more an exercise in trying to figure out a method to easily eraticate this sort of thing in the future.

I'm wondering if there is some sort of plugin that allows you to do arrays, like in CAD programs. This is just a bit of thinking out of the square at the moment and may come to nothing but it would make light work out of this sort of repeating pattern problem.

deadants

[philbach]

Well briefly I did construct a series of vertical black lines in adobe illustrator and superimposed them on the white lines on your print in a separate layer. I blurred them some and used overlay/soft light blending modes. It didn't seem to work well but I didn't spend a whole lot of time on it. I suspect though that doing something like that would work and it would help if one where real familar with a cad program or similar program.

I took a look at some of the shapes in photoshop there is a grid but none with strict vertical lines. There are some parallel lines that run obliquely. I guess if this comes up again I would make a new custom shape with parallel vertical lines and then transform them to match the artifact.

At any rate your post was very interesting and one of those things I will mull over for a few weeks and learn something. Thanks for posting it.

[MBChamberlain]

Generally speaking, if you have a repeating pattern in an image the FFT method will give you the best results. Check out ByRo's tutorial here.

[Duv]

Michael, that was the first thing I tried and got zero results. Having seen your post, I went back in and was able to see a couple of stars on the horizontal line which I removed and got a much improved image. Was there anything else you did beyond that? Sometimes what you need to do is not that obvious.

Cheers
Dave

[MBChamberlain]

Nope, just the stars on the horizontal axis. Virtical lines will appear on the horizontal access, horizontal lines on the virtical access, and diagonal lines in the four quadrants...

Michael

[Caitlin]

Michael, I tried this technique a while ago, or tried to! I just couldnt get it to work at all - could not find any 'stars'. Maybe I will have to give it another go. The result does seem a little grainy though? I wonder after grain removal will it appear soft yet again?

[deadants]

I using photoshop CS on Mac with OS X. I can't find an Alex Chirakov filter. I have installed the HSB/HSL but it just stays greyed out if I'm in greyscale mode. Do I need the Alex Chirakov filter, and is it available for OS X.

deadants

[Flora]

Hi deadants,

FFT was the first thing I tried with this image .... (still have a love-hate relationship with it, though!!! ) but didn't get far .... After reading Michael's post, I'll try it again .... Anyway, Alex Chirokov's FFT plug-in for PS doesn't come on the installation CD but can be found here ..

Wow, checking the link I just discovered they came out with a new version!!!

[deadants]

Well I downloded them but unfortunatley they are PC only. I have looked around the web and I can't seem to find anything similar for OS X.

I guess I will have to figure another method.

[Flora]

Originally Posted by deadants

Well I downloded them but unfortunatley they are PC only. I have looked around the web and I can't seem to find anything similar for OS X.

I guess I will have to figure another method.

OOOOOOOOOppppssss .... sorry ....

Still fighting with FFT .... even with the new one .... I managed to get some improvement, but at the end the stripes are still there ...

I hadn't posted the result I got via 'traditional' way ... meaning ... trying everything I could think of ... playing with contrast and sharpness using Curves and combining informations and techniques I learnt from ByRo' excellent Tutorials 1 and 2 ... because I have only managed to diminish the stripes but not to remove them completely ... Anyway here it is ... and, if it could be of interest, I'll try to write a detailed description of my steps ....

[MBChamberlain]

The "graininess" in this image isn't grain, but rather REALLY bad jpeg artifacting. I started with the neat image preset for removing jpeg artifacting lines and tweaked it for this image. It seams to have worked pretty well.

Michael

[deadants]

Nice Job MBC, It certainly looks like a shop bought one now. I have put a link on The rootschat forum so the original owner of the photo can see how it has turned out. I'm sure they will be pleased with the results.

deadants

[Duv]

Good job Michael. It looks like Neat Image was a bit heavy handed but at the same time I think the image was full of compromises.

Cheers
Dave

[MBChamberlain]

I know that it was heavy handed, hopefully the original poster will be able to work on a copy that has not been subjected to JPEG compression.

Michael