Charles,

For starters, make sure you are working on a copy.

Have your Layers Palette visible permanently on the right side of workarea.

In the Layers Palette, click the blk/white circle and select "Levels" adjustment layer. Experiment moving the top row of sliders, probably starting by placing them under the beginning and end of the graph. Perhaps by moving the shadow slider (left one) inwards, will improve your text also.

For the discoloration, you might try the clone tool, create a new blank layer above your image to clone on. (make sure the box is check ed which says "Use all Layers". Sample from a good color area and dab on stain.

Or, you might try creating a new layer, setting the mode of that layer to Overlay, make sure white is the foreground color at the bottom of the Toolbox, select an appropriate size brush, fairly soft, make the opacity of the brush around 4% (but see what works with your image, it might require a much higher number) and paint on that new blank layer. Everywhere you paint the image will lighten up, slowly. It works best by building up strokes.

You could also try the Sponge tool, set to desaturate. Choose a brush and dab or drag over discolored areas. (Best to make a duplicate layer of your image before using Sponge, so you preserve the one you started with underneath. Then you can dump the whole layer if you don't like it.)

Or you could draw a loose lasso (to select) around the words, maybe one circle around all the words on one line, then Select>Inverse, click the blk/white circle in Layers Palette, pull up the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Whatever color the discoloration is, change where it says RGB to the problem color. Try moving the saturation slide way to the left. It might take two colors you need to desaturate.

You could also try the "Replace Color" feature. You'd sample a midrange color from the offending color with the eyedropper in the dialog box and then click on the eyedropper with the plus sign. With this drag it over the other shades of the offending color. Watch the fuzziness slider, start with it quite far to the left and after eyedropping, try moving it little by little to the right while watching the little display within that box. After selecting the color, perhaps moving the Saturation slider far left would work, or maybe moving the Lightness slider far right. Experiement.

You could alternately pull up a Threshold adjustment layer from the Palette, play with the slider, this might be a good thing.

It is very hard to know what to suggest not seeing your image, I hope this leads you in some worthwhile direction though.

Charles_G._Townsend

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