Dealing with Photocopies

PS
Posted By
Paul_Skolnick
May 1, 2007
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542
Replies
16
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Closed
I’m dealing with some genealogy documents — ie, OLD stuff. The source images are photocopies, and they’re grayed in places as a result of poor quality photocopying and generally hard to read. I’d like to enhance these documents in Photoshop CS2 to improve legibility and appearance. I’d like to minimize (or remove) the gray and darken and sharpen the writing.

Here’s a sample document:
< http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=17MJk8271h3zrc0aSF FECsHeFzp>

I’m open to all suggestions and appreciate your help.

Paul Skolnick

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P
Phosphor
May 1, 2007
Eek!

Getting the color and stains out of the white areas is easy. A couple passes with Image’Adjustments’Selective Color’Whites’ "–100" × 4 will do it just fine (or do the same with a couple of Selective Color adjustment layers).

The problem is trying to pull the type out of the dark gray vertical bar about 30% over from the left side, and to beef up the certificate number and the handwriting in the center, boxed-in area.

Certainly you’d want to keep as much original as possible for historical authenticity, but from the purely genealogical standpoint, and because these are just photocopies anyway, people are more interested in informational accuracy.

So, in my opinion, in those places where you can read the information accurately, but are just ugly, it wouldn’t be a crime to just recreate
the text in a separate layer and get rid of the blotchy hazy areas altogether. For instance, in the "vertical gray bar" area near the left, just use a font that looks like a typewriter.

Or, maybe this is against the rules for whoever you’re doing this for? You haven’t said whether this is a personal project, or for a private client or if it’s something official.
P
Phosphor
May 1, 2007
JO
Jim_Oblak
May 1, 2007
Photocopies are 1-bit images so you really only need to extract 1-bit data. Consider opening your Levels and pulling in the end sliders. This will retain the original 1-bit photocopy data while dumping the grunge on the paper.
P
Phosphor
May 1, 2007
That’s all well and good, Jim, but Paul hasn’t explained which generation of photocopy he has, or how it got from paper to an image file.

Clearly, the image he displayed is in color, so it gets a little more complicated than just yanking Levels sliders.

Then again, there are some processes that can’t be done with 1-bit files, so that could be a good thing.
JO
Jim_Oblak
May 1, 2007
It does not matter what generation of photocopy one has. The xerographic process is 1-bit only technology. A copy of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy is still 1-bit. This is how the xerographic process works.

If you want to go to the original xerographic process state before the paper became discolored with age, you would reduce this to 1-bit. The only grayscale data that you see there was created from scanning the 1-bit artwork. That grayscale data was introduced by the scanner. It was not in the ‘original’ photocopy.

If one wants ‘to minimize (or remove) the gray and darken and sharpen the writing’, then one would return the art to its original 1-bit status.
PS
Paul_Skolnick
May 2, 2007
TUES – MAY 01 – 5:40P PDT

Thanks for all of the quick answers on the Forum.

The short answer is, I DON’T KNOW what generation of photocopy this is. Public-records offices all over the country churn out copies like this and sell them to people. You get in the mail a single sheet of paper, often with huge gray spots. Sometimes those spots obscure the writing or typing. Even when they don’t, they look bad.

In the case of the document I posted, the paper copy received from a public records office was scanned. I don’t know on what type of scanner, what resolution, etc.

I’m interested in understanding how best to convert the image back to a 1-bit format… if that is what will remove the gray. Anybody tell me how to do that in Photoshop CS2 for Windows?

skolnick
P
Phosphor
May 2, 2007
one-bit, schmone-bit…doesn’t matter.

"In the case of the document I posted, the paper copy received from a public records office was scanned. I don’t know on what type of scanner, what resolution, etc."

Who scanned it and how did you get it? Do they have any knowledge of image capture and manipulation or are they just a client or some office clerk? It’s obvious that the document was scanned on a color scanner.

Not that I’m looking for a bunch of attaboy back-slapping, but you haven’t made any comment on whether the work I posted above—and the explanations of how I got there—is something that is useful for you or not. You haven’t answered my question about just how authentic the final output needs to be.

With starting images as crappy as the one you’ve posted, there are no magical buttons that will clean out the junk and clear up what you wanna keep. It’s pretty likely that every one of these you do will require an educated adjustment in the application of a few simple processes.

For example, in the "vertical gray bar area 30% across from the left" there is virtually nothing you can do to isolate the text from the junk, short of painstaking manual erasure. Better to just replace it, as I have done.
JJ
John Joslin
May 2, 2007
Sometimes the paper gets discoloured after the black and white scan/copy has been stored.
P
Phosphor
May 2, 2007
We won’t know what’s going on here unless the O.P. is a little more forthcoming and explicit about the how the project starts, how it progresses, and where it needs to end up.
JO
Jim_Oblak
May 2, 2007
I’m interested in understanding how best to convert the image back to a 1-bit format

Use the Levels control. After you’ve set those to your taste, convert to bitmap (by way of grayscale first) under Image>Mode. Save as your favorite lossless TIFF format (LZW, ZIP, etc).

During the xerographic process, an original document that may have a variety of tones is reduced to a copy with black toner. There is no gray toner. This is why I see this issue as nothing more than reducing to 1-bit data. By adjusting levels in Photoshop, you can exclude the levels of gray (or color) that appear due to discoloration of the paper copy. The discoloration happens after the photocopy was made – so there should be no desire to retain this grayscale or color data.

Returning the document to 1-bit status is not going to clean up the ‘borough’ area of your sample. You could try running some of the filters at Filter>Noise – – but running any of these will likely harm the rest of the page. Document restorers may manually paint out the offending blotches.

it wouldn’t be a crime to just recreate the text in a separate layer

Yes it would if that document indicates that ‘no mutilated certificate will be received’. These seem to be official documents that should not be altered; only cleaned. There is a reason why documents have seals stamped on them.
P
Phosphor
May 2, 2007
It’s a crap n-th generation photocopy, Jim. There’s no hope of it being taken for anything official at this point.
JO
Jim_Oblak
May 2, 2007
If it is not official, why not just retype the entire thing in Microsoft Word? Document restoration is different than document recreation. The document may not be official but it appears that it was copied from an official document. Monkeying with Photoshop tricks diminishes the credibility of the document.

A future viewer would be concerned if they saw new type covering that ‘crap n-th generation photocopy’. They would wonder who added the type, if the type was just a duplicate or a correction or an addition.

The ideal situation would be to retype the entire document on a separate invisible layer. Future viewers can search the text electronically yet still view the image of the original document with flaws intact.
P
Phosphor
May 2, 2007
Again, you’re assuming facts not in evidence.

Credibility, schmedibility…we don’t know if that’s germane in this case. We don’t know squat, and can’t know squat about the purpose of the O.P.’s project until he provides more detail.

Here’s all we know:"I’d like to enhance these documents in Photoshop CS2 to improve legibility and appearance."For all we know, the documents could just be something to stick in a family scrapbook.
JO
Jim_Oblak
May 2, 2007
I get the impression that you do not take genealogy as seriously as others. People get militant about archiving data properly. Doctoring documents, even if they might be ‘unofficial’, is sacrilege.

If you are concerned that sufficient info regarding the application has not been provided by Paul, why don’t you spend the time waiting for follow-up by colorizing the few old B&W films that Ted Turner has not gotten to yet? 🙂

I’m gonna go spend my time wondering how to enhance my family DV tapes to look better on HD.
P
Phosphor
May 2, 2007
I’m not stomping your grapes over your opinion about might be appropriate handling for the document, so much as trying to show you that you’re assuming too much about how much importance preserving the authenticity of the document plays in the project.

We don’t even know yet.

I’ve asked what the end use is going to be, and I’m waiting for an answer (and debating with you in the meantime :)) and have provided some possible techniques while we wait for a more detailed response.

You seem to be assuming that the end user (and we don’t even know who that is, either) needs to keep the document precious. It very well could be that someone is just putting a memory book together, where they’d rather see something that looks nice and is legible, as opposed to making sure as much authenticity is preserved as possible.

Care to clear this up for us, Paul?
P
Phosphor
May 3, 2007
One-time float.

Paul?

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