Chainsaws and dandelions

Hi, I like to buy Sudoku magazines (the ‘killer’ variety with the grids inside), scan the puzzles into jpgs, and them print them much bigger. The only way I get a decent image is to scan them grayscale, which leaves much of the backgrounds grey (surprise surprise). I am getting through quite a few ink cartridges printing these things out, and thought that even a newby like me ought to be able to use CS3 to remove the gray, and leave just the black grid/numbers.

It seems to me that using CS3 for such a mundane task is like using a chainsaw to cut down a dandelion; i.e. it is far too powerful a beast, because i have tried many different techniques (boosting contrast/ brightness, painting white etc), but have so far failed to find a slick method to do what i want. Given that there are roughly 50 puzzles per mag, I was hoping for something very simple.
Can anyone out there help?

Can anyone out there help?

On Sat, 29 Mar 2008 06:44:40 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

Can anyone out there help?

Contact me if you want to beta test this:

http://www.ransen.com/ransenscan/

it might be just the lightweight program you need.

Cheers for the rapid replies, guys.

I’ve tried the Levels adjustment trick, and possibly because there’s no actual white on the pic, i can’t get white without washing out the fainter black dotted lines. However, you have both suggested that maybe i’m approaching this from the wrong end, and should be scanning differently in the first place. I have a bog-standard HP 1350 3-in-1, and I’ve been using the equally standard Windows scanner software. There is no ‘scan as line art’ option that I can find. However, with some messing about, using the HP scanner software, I’ve managed slightly better results, but it always seems to be a fine balance between losing the faint ‘- – – – -‘ type of lines, and turning the grey white.

"Owen Ransen" wrote in message

On Sat, 29 Mar 2008 06:44:40 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

Can anyone out there help?

Contact me if you want to beta test this:

http://www.ransen.com/ransenscan/

it might be just the lightweight program you need.

Not to disparage your product, but if one already has CS3 he can use the built-in automation to scan a number of pictuers at once to one image, and it will separate each from the single scan, and straighten them.