Color Issue with Written Document’s

RF
Posted By
Ronald_Fiskum
Aug 11, 2004
Views
266
Replies
5
Status
Closed
At work we are trying to image 150+ year old hand written document’s. Many are printed on a pale blue paper and written in red or black ink.

Our problem is that once a .tiff image they can be read well on the pc screen but when you print them out the dark background makes them nearly unreadable. I think with Photoshop it is possible to make the background lighter but I am a noob at this and cannot figure it out……HELP!

Thanks
Ron
Related Tags
color document issue write

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L
LenHewitt
Aug 11, 2004
Ron,

To address your question as asked:

You may well find that going to Hue/Saturation (CTRL+U), selecting the Blue channel and increasing the Lightness slider will lighten the b/g quite well.

To address your problem:

If you have your colour management set up correctly, then the printout and the screen should be a very close match. If it isn’t, you need to sort out your colour management. 15 minutes or so spent with the tutorials at http://www.computer-darkroom.com should be well worth your while.
JH
Jake_Hannam
Aug 11, 2004
Len,

I wonder if he isn’t using a BW laser printer. Color shades don’t do well on lasers. If that is the case, color management wouldn’t do much, would it?

Ronald,

IF you are indeed using a BW printer, you could get rid of the blue in a number of ways (magic wand, hue & saturation, color replace, etc.). IF you are printing on a color printer, you can use one or more of these tools to reduce the intensity of the blue background.
You could also try Adjust-Brightness/Contrast. There are literally hundreds of ways to do what you want with Photoshop (well, maybe not hundreds but, to use the technical term, bunches of ways).
Y
YrbkMgr
Aug 11, 2004
Really, the answer depends on whether you’re just trying to create a legible high quality print, or whether you’re trying to reproduce the look of the original.
RF
Ronald_Fiskum
Aug 11, 2004
Thanks all for the quick response’s, I’ll definately read the tutorial and thanks for the web address.

Yes, we are using B&W laser jet printer’s to reproduce the document’s.

This is a 2 fold project to capture the original document’s and make them available electronically to staff and as hard copy to any company who has need to see the original document. As a record’s manager I want/need to preserve the original document’s electronically as they look and feel in hard copy. However as output I need high quality reprints which I am currently not getting.

Again my thanks to all of you for the ideas/suggestions.

Ron
GT
Gene Trujillo
Aug 11, 2004
Yes, we are using B&W laser jet printer’s to reproduce the document’s…However as output I need high quality reprints which I am currently not getting.

It seems to me that you have three choices:

1. You can reproduce the documents so they are optimized for printing on a B&W laser printer — try playing with threshold and/or high pass filter, for instance.

2. You can preserve the documents look and feel exactly using some of the techniques Jake outlined.

3. You can have two versions, an optimized version for the laser and another preserving the look and feel.

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– in 4 materials (clay versions included)

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