[Hidden-tech] Question about Image Quality

[Chris Hoogendyk]

A couple of people have mentioned putting black behind an image so that whatever is printed on the 
backside doesn't come through so much.

That made me wonder about another situation, so I thought I would add a question. I've been scanning 
old family letters to/from my grandparents who were in China. Some of these letters are over 100 
years old and were written on onion skin or tissue, both sides, in black ink! It is difficult to 
read the original, and the scanned images are also hard to read. Would putting black behind it work 
in this situation? Or would the translucent media just make the whole image become too dark? Has 
anyone dealt with this or have any magic tricks? Post processing?

I'm using an Epson Artisan 837, and I have Adobe Creative Suit CS5 as well as Adobe Photoshop 
Elements on Mac OS X Mavericks. I'm using Adobe Acrobat Pro to assemble multiple images into 
optimized pdfs. I also have an Epson Perfection V600, but I just have that for transparencies and 
haven't used it much yet.


On 4/22/14, 11:47 AM, Lynne Rudié wrote:
> Hi Dede
> 	I agree with the comments already posted. But since sometimes we don't live in an ideal world, I have had passable results from scanning a printed image at a really high resolution so that I can do some image correcting or color balancing in photoshop and then reduce the resolution to make a more reasonable file size.
> 	Sometimes the unsharp filter helps, depending on the quality of the printed image. My scanner has a backlight correction setting but putting black behind the image also helps. And, of course, use the descreening filter when you scan.
> 	Good luck!
> 	Lynne
>
> Lynne Rudié
> Graphic Design
> 413.863.9406
> 413.834.0889 (c)
> lynnerudie at verizon.net

-- 
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Chris Hoogendyk

-
    O__  ---- Systems Administrator
   c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments
  (*) \(*) -- 347 Morrill Science Center
~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst

<hoogendyk at bio.umass.edu>

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Erdös 4