Poor Quality B&W Pictures

GH
Posted By
Geoff_H_Barrett
May 18, 2005
Views
277
Replies
5
Status
Closed
I am preparing a book with pictures that in some cases are 100 years old. I had to take a picture of two of them from a book using a digital camera and was able to work on the in Photoshop but still did not get a copy that I am really happy with. TGhe are still very dark and I need to be able lighten them further without losing a quality picture.
Any help wopuld be apprciated

Geoff
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AC
Art Campbell
May 18, 2005
First, if at all possible, I’d try to scan them instead of shooting them, both to increase your initial quality and to ensure that you’re not creating some distortion that you’ll have to manually remove.

On your existing shots, what does the histogram look like? Is your exposure OK? If so, you may need to look at ways to expand the dynamic range, as you can do with CS2.

Art
LM
Lynch_Mike
May 19, 2005
I find that increasing contrast can help when lightening dark images. Also, try playing with levels and curves (manually).
GH
Geoff_H_Barrett
May 19, 2005
Thanks to both of the respondents on this problem. As suggested I scanned the pictures from the book rather than using a digital camera to get them and this DID prove a definite advantage.

Then I used the curves programme and was able to lighten the picture considerably and saved them both and printed them and they are very much better than I had before so I am very grateful to both of you for your suggestions.

They really worked and the printed output is so much better than I can now say that I am ready to print the book.

Many thanks again to both

Goef
LM
Lynch_Mike
May 19, 2005
You’re welcome Geoff
GH
Geoff_H_Barrett
May 20, 2005
Mike, I hope this clears up the question that I had

Geoff

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