Making a bleached sign readable

[Marc]

Hi,

stumbled over an very old picture, taken roundabout 1900.

One part of this image is a sign, and something has been written on it. No surprise

But: the image is over-exposed and bleached, so I don't get any useful text out of this.

So I thought I put it here and cry for help

Best regards,
Marc

[Rexx]

There is nothing here. Perhaps the digit "4" to the top left.

What you may do:
Copy the photo again (scan or photo), using the full dynamic range available. If you're taking a picture, use 2*45 degrees light. If you're scanning, put the picture all four directions in the scanner and scan 4 times.

The picture you submitted had information in only the upper third of the dynamic range. It also was heavily JPEG compressed, so in addition to the original's poor condition, it was severely digitally damaged, so to say.

[Ed_L]

Rexx is right. If you could re-scan the image at the hightest *optical* resolution (assuming it's a scan), you might be able to upload just a cropped portion, so it will meet the size limit requirements. Then, if there's anything there, maybe someone can help you pull it out.

Ed

[Marc]

Well, it is a scan, and I scanned it using 16bit mode,
so I suppose I've got all detail which could be get.

Tried the suggestion to turn the picture before scanning,
but that made no difference. But I'll save this idea for
future projects...

And the sign is cropped-down, original psd file is 40 MB large

Just uploading a 900 kb psd-file containing all details. cropped down to the sign itself.

Download PSD File

Hope you'll find a way to get more out of it


Best regards,
Marc

[Vikki]

There is a bit more lettering to be had.
I converted the image to CMYK.
Singled out the Yellow channel, and converted that to Grayscale.
Duplicated that layer, and set the Blend Mode to Color Burn.

[Marc]

Hi Vikki, impressive result!

More than I ever had

Many thanks for this idea, gonna check it out...

[Leah]

This is what I got out of playing around with the b channel in LAB mode and the Blue channel in RGB mode...

Not sure it helps much. If I absolutely had to guess, I might think that the first word is Jos. or Jas. and that therefore the top line is someone's name - second word starting with that curly letter that I would guess might be an "L". But I wouldn't like to stake anything on it

[Marc]

Fiddled around with this for some time...

I am quite sure the first sign is a "4", perhaps a "K" after that - or not... darn.

Hmmm, as it seems I should ask for a wonder instead of a photoshop hint

Anyway, the text has become a little more visible, and we simply can not rescue any information which is not in the picture.

Many thanks to all!
Marc