expanding a scanned pen stroke

AT
Posted By
als_trash
Sep 26, 2008
Views
394
Replies
4
Status
Closed
Hi Folks,

First time on the list. Have been playing with this for a while, but can’t figure out how to do it.

I have a scanned signature (raster). I need to make the signature line fatter, but still want it to look like a written signature. (This is all legal by the way – just for a colleague who is out of town). I’m not quite sure how to "stretch" it. I hope this makes sense. I’ve tried making paths from selections, transforming, etc. It’d be nice if there were some photoshop algorithm like the bicubic it uses when resizing entire photos, but I haven’t been able to find one that will work in this instance.

To paraphrase, let’s say he signed with a size 5 pen. I need to increase that to a size 10.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Best,
Allie

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K
KatWoman
Sep 26, 2008
"Allie" wrote in message
Hi Folks,

First time on the list. Have been playing with this for a while, but can’t figure out how to do it.

I have a scanned signature (raster). I need to make the signature line fatter, but still want it to look like a written signature. (This is all legal by the way – just for a colleague who is out of town). I’m not quite sure how to "stretch" it. I hope this makes sense. I’ve tried making paths from selections, transforming, etc. It’d be nice if there were some photoshop algorithm like the bicubic it uses when resizing entire photos, but I haven’t been able to find one that will work in this instance.

To paraphrase, let’s say he signed with a size 5 pen. I need to increase that to a size 10.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Best,
Allie

it should be in vector format I think
I had one made for me many years ago
the guy used illustrator paths

you could try this

select color range on the black writing
or use your path you made
and change to selection expand it by 5 pixels and fill with black?

if the edges are not pretty you might have to do some clean up with another path
AT
als_trash
Sep 26, 2008
KatWoman wrote:
"Allie" wrote in message
Hi Folks,

First time on the list. Have been playing with this for a while, but can’t figure out how to do it.

I have a scanned signature (raster). I need to make the signature line fatter, but still want it to look like a written signature. (This is all legal by the way – just for a colleague who is out of town). I’m not quite sure how to "stretch" it. I hope this makes sense. I’ve tried making paths from selections, transforming, etc. It’d be nice if there were some photoshop algorithm like the bicubic it uses when resizing entire photos, but I haven’t been able to find one that will work in this instance.

To paraphrase, let’s say he signed with a size 5 pen. I need to increase that to a size 10.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Best,
Allie

it should be in vector format I think
I had one made for me many years ago
the guy used illustrator paths

you could try this

select color range on the black writing
or use your path you made
and change to selection expand it by 5 pixels and fill with black?
if the edges are not pretty you might have to do some clean up with another path

Hi Kat,

Thanks a bunch for the tip. This is what I ended up doing. It’s a fine solution for now, though it doesn’t end up looking much like a real pen, just pure black and all. I feathered the selection a bit, but still, not quite the real deal. What I was really hoping to find was something that would allow me to stretch the raster out, to make it look basically the same as before, but just with a fatter stroke.

Anyway, thanks a bunch. If anyone else has any ideas about how to stretch out a complicated selection’s contents, lemme know!

Thanks,
Allie
K
KatWoman
Sep 26, 2008
"Allie" wrote in message
KatWoman wrote:
"Allie" wrote in message
Hi Folks,

First time on the list. Have been playing with this for a while, but can’t figure out how to do it.

I have a scanned signature (raster). I need to make the signature line fatter, but still want it to look like a written signature. (This is all legal by the way – just for a colleague who is out of town). I’m not quite sure how to "stretch" it. I hope this makes sense. I’ve tried making paths from selections, transforming, etc. It’d be nice if there were some photoshop algorithm like the bicubic it uses when resizing entire photos, but I haven’t been able to find one that will work in this instance.

To paraphrase, let’s say he signed with a size 5 pen. I need to increase that to a size 10.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Best,
Allie

it should be in vector format I think
I had one made for me many years ago
the guy used illustrator paths

you could try this

select color range on the black writing
or use your path you made
and change to selection expand it by 5 pixels and fill with black?
if the edges are not pretty you might have to do some clean up with another path

Hi Kat,

Thanks a bunch for the tip. This is what I ended up doing. It’s a fine solution for now, though it doesn’t end up looking much like a real pen, just pure black and all. I feathered the selection a bit, but still, not quite the real deal. What I was really hoping to find was something that would allow me to stretch the raster out, to make it look basically the same as before, but just with a fatter stroke.

Anyway, thanks a bunch. If anyone else has any ideas about how to stretch out a complicated selection’s contents, lemme know!

Thanks,
Allie

I forgot one other idea I did recently

put the signature selection on it’s own transparent layer

choose layer effects>stroke>outside stroke
JW
Jim Webb
Sep 29, 2008
I’ve fixed this for signatures being placed on electronic letterheads.

In photoshop add some gaussian blur (try with 2 to 4 pixel blur), then use adjustments>brightness/contrast (use ‘legacy’ if you are in CS3). Bump the contrast up to about +70, then play with brightness until you get a nice thickness.

To use the signature on coloured backgrounds make sure you convert to bitmap and save as a PSD or TIF.

Jim W

Allie wrote:
Hi Folks,

First time on the list. Have been playing with this for a while, but can’t figure out how to do it.

I have a scanned signature (raster). I need to make the signature line fatter, but still want it to look like a written signature. (This is all legal by the way – just for a colleague who is out of town). I’m not quite sure how to "stretch" it. I hope this makes sense. I’ve tried making paths from selections, transforming, etc. It’d be nice if there were some photoshop algorithm like the bicubic it uses when resizing entire photos, but I haven’t been able to find one that will work in this instance.

To paraphrase, let’s say he signed with a size 5 pen. I need to increase that to a size 10.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Best,
Allie

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