Text improvement.

[juco]

Having had helpful advice on my previous document using threshold levels. Is there a relatively easy way to enhance the print in the attached document as you can see some print is lighter than others. When printed it is still readable but would like to improve the text if possible.

 

[thebestcpu]

Hi Juco
I am sure there are a variety of ways to approach your project.
- First, I would start with the best possible scan/photograph with higher resolution and have it in a non-comrpessed format (not JPEG) and start processing from there
- Increase the size of the scan (I did 10X with nearest neighbor rendering mode and then applied box blur set to 4
- I then went and applied the Adobe Camera Raw filter and increased the clarity and texture. And either in ACR or back in photoshop applied a curves adjustment Layer to get rid of the surround light gray noise.
The image below shows the results and the left and original on the right.
So some improvement.
Hope this gives you a direction to consdier
John Wheeler

 

[juco]

....................- First, I would start with the best possible scan/photograph with higher resolution and have it in a non-comrpessed format (not JPEG) and start processing from there .......................
My starting point unfortunately is from a PDF file of an old document and I have taken screen captures of the individual pages.

 

[thebestcpu]

Totally understand @juco
Being a genealogist, there are many documents that I have had to restore from limited starting images. It's just a first step I always include as there are many times people can get a better image yet not always. In PDFs, it is possible to extract the original image out of the PDF which depending on how you are displaying the image may or may not be better than a screenshot copy.

Also, sometimes it takes trying different techniques. Here is an example of the same text using GigaPixel AI. Not sure it is better, just different. Gigapixel result is on the right:





Here is another approach that is semi-custom

I made various adjustments through a Smart Object and applying filters yet the Filters were masked by a custom mask based on how dark the characters were. The darker the characters were the less the filters were applied. So the emphasis for change was just for the lighter characters and less so on the darker characters. Just looked at the image and asked myself how to I make this more readable.




Hope this ideas give you some different directions to consider.
If you have more questions, just post them and best wishes on your project.
John Wheeler

 

[juco]

Thanks for the input thebestcpu, more for me to trial and error with.
I am 99.9% own use photo editing and although very limited in my knowledge with photoshop I can get good results on images. When it comes to documents I definitely struggle.
All things considered its so much easier these days though, back in the 60s as a teenager I converted a slide projector to use as an enlarger for 35mm film all black & white back then.

 

[thebestcpu]

You're welcome @juco I agree, sometimes it takes experimentation and trying things out.
John Wheeler