Extract Signature

[maverick911]

I have photographed a watercolour to produce a print. The artist has inserted a signature on a piece of brown card so I would like to clone the area where the signature is and replace the signature in that area.

How can I do this in Photoshop?

[edgework]

Clone out the overall area; healing brush to smooth out the edges.

[Tony W]

To get a light signature one way you may want to try:

• Select the whole signature square and make a copy of this layer only. Hide this layer for now
• Go back to your background layer (or copy of) and select and copy areas of the sea from the left and drag them over the signature.
• Blend in edges where necessary. You should now have just the image without the sig.
• Reveal the signature layer and drag to the top of your layers pallete - this should now look like your original
• Add a clipped Levels layer to effect the signature only and adjust until whites are pure white and blacks are good. You may need to paint in a little to get the result you need.
• Invert the signature and apply a small amount of blur - set mode to Lighten and play with the opacity to get the result you want.
• EDIT: If you want a black signature do not invert the signature and this time select Multiply mode

[maverick911]

Thats brilliant thank you Tony. I'll have a go but not quite sure I understand the method.

[Tony W]

Your welcome. If it is not clear just let me know and I will try and explain it a little better.

[maverick911]

Thank you very much.

[maverick911]

Originally Posted by Tony W

Your welcome. If it is not clear just let me know and I will try and explain it a little better.

Tony, I am struggling. When the clipped layer is added, do I adjust blacks and whites using levels?

I dont seem to be able to get a good result using opacity, when background is correct signature is not clear.

[Tony W]

maverick911, I am sorry but my write up of steps incorrect. For some reason after the event I had forgotten what I did relating to the signature .

Hope the attachment gives a little more clarity.
Basically you are treating the image as two seperate entities a. the background and b. the signature
1. I think it is clear what needs to be done painting out the sig. on a duplicate image as in the background to this attachment.
2. You then need to make a selection of the signature only and make a copy to work on.
3. Next step is go to the channels menu and drag a copy of the Red channel down to duplicate.
4. Goto Image Apply Levels and increase contrast to get a good B&W image
5. Clean up the white areas - I used white brush set to Overlay.
6. Once you have the signature looking good make sure the sig. is on the top layer and then change the blend mode to Lighten (white text) or invert the sig. (black text) and change mode to Multiply.

[maverick911]

Sadly this seems to be beyond me but thanks very much for your input Tony - brilliant.

Mark

[Tony W]

It really is not that difficult therefore I think that my explanation not as clear as it could be . So I will suggest a different way which you may find easier? I am assuming you are using PS here?

• You will need to treat the image as two seperate ones initially therefore first duplicate so that you have two copies and perhaps label the copy as signature.
• Working on the signature copy first we need to get a high contrast image showing just black and white to achieve this first crop the image to just contain the signature - we are not interested in the background as we have this on our first copy and will be cutting and pasting later on.

• Add a channel adjustment layer and tick the Monochrome box. Set the channels to something like Red=100, Green = +39, Blue = +3 and Constant +3. You should now have a low contrast B&W image of the signature
• Copy the combined channels to a new layer using Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E
• Add a Levels adjustmet layer and move the Black, Midtone, and White points to get the most contrast and the best pure B&W image you can achieve
• Copy this again to a new layer with Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E
• Work on this layer with a small brush to remove any grey areas and generally tidy up to get a nice signature. Something similar to the attachment

• You can now work on the original image to remove the signature. I just made some selections of the sea, cut and pasted and blended in so that it looked like the top image of the second attachment.
• Now go to your signature image and use select all copy then back to your background edit paste which will add your sig layer to the background. This should give you a similar result to the middle image of the second attachment
• All you need to do now is to make sure the sig. layer is selected and change the mode to Multiply and you will end up with the last image shown. If you want white text then select sig. layer press Ctrl+I to invert and this time set the layer mode to Lighten
• You may want to refine the signature by adding a little gaussian blur to soften the edges a little and also change the sig layer opacity to allow a little bleed through of the underlaying background sea scape

Hope this gets you where you need to be

[maverick911]

Thank you very much for taking the trouble to do that Tony. Have to say PS does confuse sometimes.