VMs: Faded Text on Images

["Glen Claston" <gc-@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The quality of these images is astounding.  One can see faded text on f1r.
Good enough to use enhancement techniques.  I just tried something I'd like
to share with you.

Many years ago I was working on hi-res images of the Northumberland
Manuscript, a document rescued from a fire.  My images were 256 greyscale,
but very detailed.  Those who use PaintShop Pro are familiar with the color
replacer function of the program, very good for pulling out detail in a
densely populated field.

Enter your .sid file, and blow up a suspected section of faded text, and
then save it to .tiff so you're not dealing with the lossy .jpg format.   My
particular example selection contains 6,991 colors, a far cry from the 256
greyscale I used on the Northumberland Manuscript.

I'm currently using PaintShop Pro 7, which has even better features that
work on color images, but the gist of this (I've just tried with immediately
promising results), is that you set the tool functions down to the minimum,
replacing one color at a time, from the lightest to the darkest, with a
"contrast" color, such as white, yellow, red, etc.  Tedious business, but
PSP7 offers you a color palette of the image to select from if you wish to
make the changes carte blanche.  You'll start seeing the outlines of the
letters forming, and up to a point this global color replacement enhances
the text.  Once global replacement starts working against you, you'll have
to apply some "art" to your work.

Zoom in on a particular section at a time and deal with the selection
pallette only.  It's a hit and miss process from here on out, but trying
different options will bring out the text.  You may have to use darker
replacement colors near the edges of the text to draw it out, but in a few
hour's time, you should be able to get a relatively clear picture of the
text.  PSP isn't exactly the LucasArts Ranch in high tech imagery, but it's
great for this kind of work, and the Beinecke images are of sufficient
quality to make this happen.

GC


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