Donna,
I have to do similar things sometimes for documents. Hundreds at times, and I use mostly the levels adjustment.
enhance / adjust brightness and contrast / levels
Move the outside sliders in first under the highest peak and then finish with the middle slider.
Touch up by using the eyedropper to get a matching color and paintbrush any areas that need it.
Donna,
Maybe I should mention that you should start with a high resolution scan because it is small and you probably want to reproduce it to a larger size. Try 600 resolution. Higher if you can.
Are you scanning it as a color image? If not, do so, even if the original is black & white. You’ll get a better result.
Use the highest resolution you have available – if the file size is large, you can downsize a copy of the file if necessary, but upsizing after the scan will always be disappointing.
Bob in Las Vegas
Pete:
Thanks for the suggestions. I scanned at 300, but will go back and scan higher. I had good luck at increasing the size by percentages to get it to print out at 8×10 size and could still read text that wasn’t under a black smudge.
Do you think it is possible to remove the black smudges and not lose the text underneath?
Donna you may have to make very careful use of the clone tool. Can you make out any of the text? There isn’t a way to remove the smudge without removing what’s underneath, because by now the digitized image can’t distinguish text from a smudge – it all looks like one blob to the scanner. The best you might be able to do is greatly magnify the image for the closest view and carefully clone out the areas of smudged black around the text. If you know or can guess what it might say, you also might be able to carefully reproduce the text with a brush. Redoing things like this can be very tedious, but with time and patience it’s amazing what you can do. There has to be something to work with, though.
Wonder if you could photgraph the original using either a dig or film camera and use a couple of different filters to try and "see" through the smudge?
Dick
Donna,
Sounds like these black smudges are pretty bad in some places.
Try The levels adjustment and see if the text becomes more visible. (Work on a copy and make minor change with the left slider and drastic changes with the right then middle. Hopefully you can see enough of the text then that you can use the paintbrush and get rid of the smudge totally.
If you can post a copy on the web or e mail it to me so we can see just how much correction is required.
Pete
Thanks to all for all the tips and suggestions. Gives me different things to try and a good rainy day project. Will let you know what I come up with.
Thanks so much. This is a great forum!
Donna
