A Windows XP help forum. PCbanter

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Go Back   Home » PCbanter forum » Microsoft Windows 7 » Windows 7 Forum
Site Map Home Register Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Web Partners

Need Sharper Scan



 
 
Thread Tools Rate Thread Display Modes
  #1  
Old April 22nd 14, 02:08 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
No_Name
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 58
Default Need Sharper Scan

I am using Epson Scan that has three modes, home, office, and
professional. None improve things much. My real problem is that the
original is quite 'weak' - the printing is not very distinct, even in
my original copy (which may be a scanned copy in and of itself I
guess). I just need something to make the black (gray) more black,
and the white more white. Can someone suggest a W7 something?
Big Fred
Ads
  #4  
Old April 22nd 14, 02:24 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Paul
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 18,275
Default Need Sharper Scan

wrote:
I am using Epson Scan that has three modes, home, office, and
professional. None improve things much. My real problem is that the
original is quite 'weak' - the printing is not very distinct, even in
my original copy (which may be a scanned copy in and of itself I
guess). I just need something to make the black (gray) more black,
and the white more white. Can someone suggest a W7 something?
Big Fred


You don't mention the type of material being scanned.

For example, newsprint consist of a bunch of "dots".
You need the scanner set to "descreen", and the descreen
set to the number of dots per inch. On some maps from
a glossy map book, that might be around 150 DPI. I usually
count them, to try to get a decent setting. Newsprint
is likely lower than that.

Very few prints are "continuous tone". If you have photographs
on silver halide, those have grain, but the grain is quite small
compared to the issues above.

You can examine the material with a magnifying glass or
a microscope first, to get some idea of what you're dealing with.
With the microscope, you can see how they do half-toning.

Turning up the DPI, doesn't guarantee a damn thing, with
printed matter. For most real-world samples, I get the
most benefit from the descreen done in the scanner driver,
and quite low resolution settings. The only time I could use
high res, is with some kind of photographic materials.
(And I'm not a photographer.)

*******

To make light gray and dark gray into saturated colors,
your photo editor can do that for you. As an example
of a transform, you've probably seen gamma plots before
(one for R, one for G, one for B), and by moving the
control points in the curve, achieve affects like that.

For some materials, simple thresholding is enough.
The end result is a black and white image.

If the scanner itself is limiting, you can take two
identical scans and use an "average" function in
Photoshop (A+B)/2, and that averages out the scanner
sensor noise. But your problem sounds like a poorly
contrasting source, and there is no quick fix for that.

*******

If you want further help, chop out a piece of the
uncorrected image, with no identifying information in it,
and post to tinypic.com, and we can see just how messed
up this starting material is. You could upload as jpeg,
being careful to keep the outer dimensions of the image
small. Keep your sample below 1024x768 perhaps. That's to
avoid the crappy resampling that site does, if your picture
is too big. I used to be able to get better results
with imageshack.us, but they've "gone all Facebook" now.
Screw'em.

Paul
  #5  
Old April 22nd 14, 02:36 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mayayana
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 6,438
Default Need Sharper Scan

In addition to CL's advice, you might try editing.
You have a scanned image in black and white? Have
you ever used graphic editing software? If you know
nothing at all about it you can get some functionality
from the free IrfanView. If you're familiar with such
software then use Paint Shop Pro, PhotoShop, the GIMP,
or something similar to open the scanned image. (There's
also the free Paint.Net, which seems to be well reviewed,
if you don't mind installing a monstrously bloated .Net
framework. Paint.Net is made by Microsofties, and they're
careful to make sure that it always requires the very latest
version of .Net, which I think is something like 1/2 GB these
days.)

I have PSP 16 for extensive editing and working with RAW
photos, but I actually use PSP5 for most work. It does most
editing tasks with a lot less complexity than PSP16. The
graphic editing programs have always been a challenge to
learn, and over the years they've become increasingly bloated
and unnecessarily complex. IrfanView does a remarkable amount,
but it lacks a basic workspace where you can cut/copy/paste,
have numerous undo levels, zoom in and out easily, etc.

Once you have the software, you have several options:

contrast/brightness adjustment
hue/saturation/lightness adjustment
sharpness adjustment
color depth adjustment

You might need to fiddle around a bit. There are tradeoffs.
For instance, if you reduce it to a 2-color image you'll get
good black/white contrast, but you'll also lose any grays
that might be providing smooth edge transitions between
white and black.



|I am using Epson Scan that has three modes, home, office, and
| professional. None improve things much. My real problem is that the
| original is quite 'weak' - the printing is not very distinct, even in
| my original copy (which may be a scanned copy in and of itself I
| guess). I just need something to make the black (gray) more black,
| and the white more white. Can someone suggest a W7 something?
| Big Fred


  #8  
Old April 23rd 14, 12:13 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
No_Name
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 58
Default Need Sharper Scan

On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 13:09:03 -0700, Charles Lindbergh
wrote:

On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 15:35:15 -0400, wrote:

On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 06:18:44 -0700, Charles Lindbergh
wrote:

On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 09:08:30 -0400,
wrote:

I am using Epson Scan that has three modes, home, office, and
professional. None improve things much. My real problem is that the
original is quite 'weak' - the printing is not very distinct, even in
my original copy (which may be a scanned copy in and of itself I
guess). I just need something to make the black (gray) more black,
and the white more white. Can someone suggest a W7 something?
Big Fred

1. Is your document primarily text?


Yes


2. How many pages?


30



If it is mostly text, the easiest thing to try would be OCR (Optical Character
Recognition). Abby offers an online OCR service that will give you a limited
number of pages for free.

http://finereader.abbyyonline.com/en

This will basically digitize the text and create a band new document with
editable text.



I tried page 1 - only had a few fixable errors. Then I changed the
font in the .doc page to bold, and voila! The text is great.

Thanks.

Fred



Oh good, so the OCR solved your problem?


Essentially yes. I have had to do minor edits, and am half done on
the document itself. I thank you for the helps.

Big Fred
  #9  
Old April 23rd 14, 12:20 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Charles Lindbergh
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 365
Default Need Sharper Scan

On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 19:13:22 -0400, wrote:

On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 13:09:03 -0700, Charles Lindbergh
wrote:

On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 15:35:15 -0400,
wrote:

On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 06:18:44 -0700, Charles Lindbergh
wrote:

On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 09:08:30 -0400,
wrote:

I am using Epson Scan that has three modes, home, office, and
professional. None improve things much. My real problem is that the
original is quite 'weak' - the printing is not very distinct, even in
my original copy (which may be a scanned copy in and of itself I
guess). I just need something to make the black (gray) more black,
and the white more white. Can someone suggest a W7 something?
Big Fred

1. Is your document primarily text?

Yes


2. How many pages?

30



If it is mostly text, the easiest thing to try would be OCR (Optical Character
Recognition). Abby offers an online OCR service that will give you a limited
number of pages for free.

http://finereader.abbyyonline.com/en

This will basically digitize the text and create a band new document with
editable text.


I tried page 1 - only had a few fixable errors. Then I changed the
font in the .doc page to bold, and voila! The text is great.

Thanks.

Fred



Oh good, so the OCR solved your problem?


Essentially yes. I have had to do minor edits, and am half done on
the document itself. I thank you for the helps.

You are more than welcome, I am glad it helped! We use high speed Fujitsu
scanners and Abby Fine Reader extensively. Both contribute tremendously to
reducing our cost of business.
  #10  
Old April 23rd 14, 12:26 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Gene E. Bloch[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 7,485
Default Need Sharper Scan

On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 06:18:44 -0700, Charles Lindbergh wrote:

On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 09:08:30 -0400, wrote:

I am using Epson Scan that has three modes, home, office, and
professional. None improve things much. My real problem is that the
original is quite 'weak' - the printing is not very distinct, even in
my original copy (which may be a scanned copy in and of itself I
guess). I just need something to make the black (gray) more black,
and the white more white. Can someone suggest a W7 something?
Big Fred


1. Is your document primarily text?

2. How many pages?

If it is mostly text, the easiest thing to try would be OCR (Optical Character
Recognition). Abby offers an online OCR service that will give you a limited
number of pages for free.

http://finereader.abbyyonline.com/en

This will basically digitize the text and create a band new document with
editable text.


The version of Epson Scan with my XP-800 includes OCR capability, so
Roger might be able to use his the same way. He didn't indicate the
model of his printer.

But it seems he's gotten good results already...

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)
  #11  
Old April 23rd 14, 01:27 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Jason
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 878
Default Need Sharper Scan

On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 16:20:35 -0700 "Charles Lindbergh"
-snip-

You are more than welcome, I am glad it helped! We use high speed Fujitsu
scanners and Abby Fine Reader extensively. Both contribute tremendously to
reducing our cost of business.

I've found that Abby can do an excellent job with a sharp photo of a
page. I use it frequently to archive articles now; no scanner required.


  #12  
Old April 23rd 14, 03:35 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Charles Lindbergh
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 365
Default Need Sharper Scan

On Wed, 23 Apr 2014 08:27:18 -0400, Jason wrote:

On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 16:20:35 -0700 "Charles Lindbergh"
-snip-

You are more than welcome, I am glad it helped! We use high speed Fujitsu
scanners and Abby Fine Reader extensively. Both contribute tremendously to
reducing our cost of business.

I've found that Abby can do an excellent job with a sharp photo of a
page. I use it frequently to archive articles now; no scanner required.


A scanner is simply an imaging device. I too have photographed important
documents and then used Abby to convert them into editable text. However, that
becomes somewhat tedious when you need to process a couple of thousand pages in
a day.
  #13  
Old April 24th 14, 01:06 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Jason
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 878
Default Need Sharper Scan

On Wed, 23 Apr 2014 07:35:07 -0700 "Charles Lindbergh"
wrote in article


On Wed, 23 Apr 2014 08:27:18 -0400, Jason wrote:

On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 16:20:35 -0700 "Charles Lindbergh"
-snip-

You are more than welcome, I am glad it helped! We use high speed Fujitsu
scanners and Abby Fine Reader extensively. Both contribute tremendously to
reducing our cost of business.

I've found that Abby can do an excellent job with a sharp photo of a
page. I use it frequently to archive articles now; no scanner required.


A scanner is simply an imaging device. I too have photographed important
documents and then used Abby to convert them into editable text. However, that
becomes somewhat tedious when you need to process a couple of thousand pages in
a day.


But for just a handful of pages it's hard to beat, especially if you
don't happen to be near a handy scanner.
 




Thread Tools
Display Modes Rate This Thread
Rate This Thread:

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off






All times are GMT +1. The time now is 04:35 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 PCbanter.
The comments are property of their posters.