Hi,
I am trying to get some help on retouching photos taken from microfilm reader screens (ca 25 x 20 inches). I am doing this for genealogical research, looking at old documents, which are usually microfilmed as negatives (white writing on greyish-black background). I have attached SampleA.jpg which is the original photo (from the public Archives here in Luxembourg), 1360 x 1020 taken with a 1.5 megapixel camera (reduced to below 100K for this Forum).
I am trying to get the best possible 'normal' image, i.e. black writing on white background, to decipher in detail on the screen, print out and add to my genealogical records.
I have just started using Photoshop ELEMENTS (which has a few less options than the full-blooded Photoshop) and would like advice on a number of problems:
Generally, at what stage is it best to do following steps:
- Conversion from RGB to greyscale and/or bitmap.
- Inversion (from negative to positive).
Which tools to use:
-Burn midtones on the negative or dodge midtones after inversion to positive?
Adjust levels as RGB or individual colours (images have a lot of orange red in the original)?
How to remove the central circular brightness gradient from the reader lamp.
SampleB.jpg (attached to 2nd mail) is an exaggeratedly poor result as inverted greyscale, but which shows the various problems.
Looking forward to any comments and suggestions.
Peter Gutenstein
I am trying to get some help on retouching photos taken from microfilm reader screens (ca 25 x 20 inches). I am doing this for genealogical research, looking at old documents, which are usually microfilmed as negatives (white writing on greyish-black background). I have attached SampleA.jpg which is the original photo (from the public Archives here in Luxembourg), 1360 x 1020 taken with a 1.5 megapixel camera (reduced to below 100K for this Forum).
I am trying to get the best possible 'normal' image, i.e. black writing on white background, to decipher in detail on the screen, print out and add to my genealogical records.
I have just started using Photoshop ELEMENTS (which has a few less options than the full-blooded Photoshop) and would like advice on a number of problems:
Generally, at what stage is it best to do following steps:
- Conversion from RGB to greyscale and/or bitmap.
- Inversion (from negative to positive).
Which tools to use:
-Burn midtones on the negative or dodge midtones after inversion to positive?
Adjust levels as RGB or individual colours (images have a lot of orange red in the original)?
How to remove the central circular brightness gradient from the reader lamp.
SampleB.jpg (attached to 2nd mail) is an exaggeratedly poor result as inverted greyscale, but which shows the various problems.
Looking forward to any comments and suggestions.
Peter Gutenstein
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