[Hidden-tech] Question about Image Quality

[Chris Hoogendyk]

Just some feedback to the group on this. It works! Awesome!

I found that art stores carry standard color sheets of paper. I got Black, Dark Gray, and Indigo 
Blue from the art section of the UMass book store. That covers the situations with letters written 
in India ink, pencil, or more recent (1930s and 1940s) blue ink pens. The gray works well for black 
ink that has faded or that wasn't very dark to begin with. That still leaves me with a few odd 
situations, such as a letter on very thin stationary paper with red ink outline and illustration 
that was then written on in black ink, both sides. I can't block the red and the black. On the other 
hand, the red doesn't conflict quite so much with the writing.

I'm building optimized pdf files that have both an original scan without the dark paper behind it 
and the scan with the dark paper behind it for those that need it. The pdf then contains images of 
the envelope with postmarks, etc., and everything that was in it. The only bummer is that now I have 
to go back through many hundreds of pages of scans that I had already done and pick out the ones 
that I have to rescan with dark paper behind them. Extra work, but then I will have done it in the 
best quality that I can.

Many thanks to those on hidden tech who knew about this scanning magic.


On 4/22/14, 1:56 PM, Chris Hoogendyk wrote:
> 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