{"id":734,"date":"2010-04-30T17:40:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-30T22:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/enhance-document-images-for-printing\/"},"modified":"2013-07-09T17:31:24","modified_gmt":"2013-07-09T22:31:24","slug":"enhance-document-images-for-printing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/enhance-document-images-for-printing\/","title":{"rendered":"Enhance Document Images for Printing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes you run across a situation where a digital image of a document is very dark.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing.\u00a0 But when you want to print it, that darkness uses a lot of ink or toner.\u00a0 It coats the paper with so much ink\/toner that it\u2019s wasteful and with ink, it can sometimes warp the paper.\u00a0 Plus, if you want to use the image for publication, it\u2019s nice to have a cleaner version.\u00a0 Following are instructions on how to make your dark images lighter.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I use adjustment layers to edit images.\u00a0 An adjustment layer modifies an image without destroying the original image.\u00a0 With adjustment layers, you can make modifications, turn them \u201coff\u201d without losing them, or delete them and start over, all without modifying the original image.<\/p>\n

For this particular type of modification, I adjust the Curves of the image.\u00a0 Curves deal with the tonal range of the image, allowing you to control light and dark areas.\u00a0 This technique gives you a little more control than using contrast\/brightness or levels.\u00a0 There are various ways to lighten images, but this is the simplest way, especially since we are dealing with black and white documents.<\/p>\n

Note:<\/strong>\u00a0 This technique can be used with most image-editing software, but for this demonstration, I am using Photoshop CS3.<\/p>\n

Lighten Up Dark Images<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n\n
\n

Before<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

After<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

\"Example1\"<\/td>\n\"Example2\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

In the Layer<\/strong> menu, choose New Adjustment Layer<\/strong>, then choose Curves<\/strong>.\u00a0 In the New Layer<\/strong> pop-up window, click OK<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"Menu1\"<\/p>\n

Adjust the curves.\u00a0 The initial Curves dialog box appears as follows:<\/p>\n

\"Curves1\"<\/p>\n

Note the diagonal line; the bottom-left point represents black, while the top-right point represents white.\u00a0 Other points can be added along the line to control midtones.\u00a0 Because we are trying to get as close to a true black and white image as possible, I do not add additional points in the midtone range (this does become important when dealing with photographs).\u00a0 So for our purposes, we are really only concerned with adjusting the black and white points.\u00a0 Until you get the hang of it, this can be a bit of guessing game.\u00a0 Typically though, for our purpose of lightening a dark, black and white image, you want to push the light and dark into the midtone range along the x axis (horizontal).<\/p>\n

The resulting adjustment (used for the example image above) is as follows:<\/p>\n

\"Curves2\"<\/p>\n

In this case, I also adjusted the points a little bit along the y axis (vertical).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The result is basically eliminating the gray that covered the original image.<\/p>\n

Invert White on Black Images<\/strong><\/h6>\n

Another issue we often see is white text on black or a negative image.\u00a0 For these types of images, we will use the same process above, except we will add another step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\n

Before<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

Invert<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

After<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

\"Example3\"<\/td>\n\"Example4\"<\/td>\n\"Example5\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Before you adjust the curves, you need to invert the image.\u00a0 From the Layer<\/strong> menu, choose New Adjustment Layer<\/strong>, then choose Invert<\/strong>.\u00a0 In the New Layer<\/strong> pop-up window, click OK<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"Menu2\"<\/p>\n

Your image is now inverted.\u00a0 It may be that no further adjustment is needed.\u00a0 But in the example above, there is a lot of gray, making the image dark.\u00a0 Continue on by following the steps for Lighten Up Dark Images<\/em><\/strong> above.<\/p>\n

Saving The Images<\/strong><\/p>\n

You should keep the resulting file, saving it as a Photoshop (.psd) file or a TIFF (.tif) file, either of which includes the original image as well as the adjustments.\u00a0 This way, if you ever want to make additional changes, or if you need the original image, you have the native file with the original image and the layers.\u00a0 Do note that this file is much larger than saving it as a JPEG (.jpg) file, but it does maintain the integrity of the original, whereas the JPEG is a compressed file.<\/p>\n

Note:<\/strong>\u00a0 To get back to your original image, simply turn of (uncheck) the layers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\n

Layers On<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

Layers Off<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

\"LayersOn\"<\/td>\n\"LayersOff\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

I hope this helps you with those dark images you have acquired.\u00a0 I know it saves me a lot of ink!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes you run across a situation where a digital image of a document is very dark.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing.\u00a0 But when you want to print it, that darkness uses a lot of ink or toner.\u00a0 It coats the paper with so much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to","category-genblog","cat-27-id","cat-25-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3HcLI-bQ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3629,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734\/revisions\/3629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}