Old newspaper pages

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2020-02-17 20:06:41

This is a newbie question.

I have a series of newspaper columns I've kept over the years. I want to 'digitize' them ==> Fairly easy with the built-in scanner included in Notes.
Now, those columns are on the yellow-side : they've aged.

Opening them In Photoshop Pro, I would like to quickly remove the pale yellow background of the old paper.
The background is not always exactly the same yellow obviously (edges are darker).

Selecting via the Color tool is taking out some black and makes the text unreadable.
Any hints would be appreciated.

Thanks a lot.
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2020-02-17 21:59:42

Hi Dan.

What I would do depends on three things:
1. How badly the pages are aged.
2. How good I won't them to look after.
3. How much time I'm willing to spend.

Assuming the answers are:
1. Not horrific
2. OK, I guess.
3. As little as possible.

There are two things I would look at:
1. ML Enhance in the Adjust Colors tool. The effects of it can be adjusted afterward if what it does is useful but not quite to your taste.
2. Another place would be Levels adjustment in the Adjust Colors tool (set as part of the ML Enhance function). It has eyedroppers that can quickly target areas that you want to be black, white and mid-grey. The level can be tweaked afterward and is non-destructive so you can go back and edit it again later.

Also, if you have a lot of pages that need the same settings, you can save all the changes you have made in Adjust Colors to a preset so that you can apply the same changes to a whole load of images. If, on the other hand, ML Enhance works well for you (and you have a lot of images) I *think* you can add it to an Automator action. Not 100% sure on that, I've not used Automator in ages.

Hope this helps. If not come back, bring a sample image if you want to show what the scans look like, and I'm sure you'll get some more assistance (and remember, it's Pixelmator Pro, otherwise you're *really* lost :grin: ).

- Stef.
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2020-02-18 08:05:34

Just returned to notice that you said *remove* not *restore*. Do you want to need to make the background transparent?
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2020-02-18 19:14:20

Hi Stef,

Your assumptions were right.

Background can either be transparent or white ==> it's for printing purpose so it won't matter.

Your second suggestion, aka White level adjustments in the 'Adjust Colors' tool, did it wonderfully. It really worked. Thanks a lot for the tip.

I'll work on a saved preset as I have around 150-200 images (not finished scanning).

As for the software name, my bad :-)

I love Pixelmator Pro : the features and the price.

Thanks again,

Dan
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2020-02-18 20:37:29

You're welcome. Have fun.