Pals

Need some help of a technical nature. Last year at my annual visit to the PRO I took a couple of hundred Digital snaps of War Diaries, Medal Rolls etc.... Herein lies the problem. On printing out the pictures the text is illegible and in some cases badly out of focus. I have tried tinkering about with the tools on my own XP and also tried reverting to grayscale and tried printing this image but with little or no success. What I would like to know is there any software out there that will help me view these images more clearly i.e. Adobe Photoshop or some such thing, or does anybody know a few tricks of the trade that may help me here. It has been over 6 months now and I am desperate, HEEELLLP!!!

Stephen

No expert I, but the first question to ask would be: are the originals sharp? If not, you may well be out of luck although Adobe, Paintshop Pro or even Microsoft Photeditor (part of the Office Suite) have sharpening tools that might make the text a bit more legible. If you have the patience you could try to outline the engraving on a medal for instance with a brush tool. If the originals are sharp then look to your printer, change the resolution or perhaps purchase one made especially for photgraphs.

If detail in your photographs is present but obscured, it can be improved. If detail is absent, it can’t reliably be recreated without knowledge of the original.

If you post a small section of a problem photograph at full resolution, I am sure a few Pals will have a go for you.

polopk

That's not full resolution - I hope. What is needed is the original photograph at full size, not scaled down. The whole photograph should be too big for the forum, which is why I suggested posting just a section. That will be suffcient for Pals to determine whether they can make it readable. If they can, we can then work out ways and means of treating the complete images.

Sorry

Not very good at this, here i hope at full resolution.

*Please ignore my polopk in previous as I meant only to preview the post at the time!!!!

Is this as bad as it gets?

It looks perfectly legible to me.

Ken

Well, I think it is decipherable as it is. One can play about indefinitely with these things. Here are two quick efforts which may or may not be better.

Chaps

It certainly looks legible on screen here, however when it prints out it cannot be read at all or with extreme difficulty. Strange innit!

Stephen

Isolate the part that you believe is illegible. Remove as much dust as you can with the dust filter. Then push the contrast as high as possible ... make gray-scale and then sharpen. That'll be as clear as you can get it. (Frankly, it seems okay to me as it is.

Slightly off topic but very relevant to storage of photos. I have just finished reading an article here in NZ on the pitfalls of digital photos as opposed to standard developing.
There was a litany of disasters that had occured to people with important digital photos, reslution bad, discs they were stored on becoming corrupted etc and the obvious loss of treasured images.
The article stated that the standard photos developed at the chemist or whatever, on proper paper, stored in an album, with copies of negatives will always out last and be superior in clarity.
I have a modern digital camera, and they are great, but I also have an old 35mm one that belonged to Dad and I use both just to be sure
It may sound like doubling up but I have taken many photos of ww1 memorials in NZ that looked alright on digital but turned out rubbish yet the trusty old 35mm saved the day in perfect resolution.