Re: [Gimp-user] Enhancing a carbon

[Akkana Peck <akkana shallowsky com>]

Leonard Evens writes:
> My wife was involved in an auto accident, and the police gave her a copy
> of their report.  It is essentially  a carbon of the original.  The text
> they entered is very hard to read, and I was hoping to enhance it so I
> can send a copy to our insurance company which they can read.
>         
> So far, nothing I've tried, such as curves, contrast, etc, has done much
> good.   Does anyone have any suggestions about what I should try?

Sometimes it helps to stack multiple copies of the layer and play
with layer modes. Duplicate the layer in the Layers dialog, then
set the top layer to different layer modes -- for instance, Multiply
might help, or Burn, but try all of them to see what happens.

If that helps, but not enough, do it again: make a duplicate of the
top layer (so you have three layers now). Try it in the same mode as
you used for the second layer, and also try other modes -- experiment.
If nothing else, it's fun seeing what happens. :-)

Sometimes if the scan is really too light (areas of white or light
grey that should have been black text), it can help to apply a Blur
on one of the top layers, or to shift it a few pixels in one
direction or another; in that case a mode like Darken Only might help.

        ...Akkana