How to fix scanned images?

[Xarx]

Hello,

I've got a lot of paper models from old teen magazines, and I want to scan them. There are, however, several problems, and especially the second one I need to solve. Could you provide me with an advice? I attached a sample image. (Of course, I have the scans in raw format myself. Here I had to convert it to JPEG due to the attachment max allowed size limit.)

1. The old paper is not white, it's rather of a cream or yellowish color. I use the Grim Color Reaper plugin to make it white, with pretty satisfactory results.

2. The models are printed with web-offset technique (probably), but sometimes the CMYK colors are not positioned correctly to fit together. See the sample image. I'd like to correct the CMYK color positioning as best as possible. But I havent't succeeded, so far.

The main problem here is in that the scanned CMYK colors are "dirty" and not saturated enough. And I haven't found a plugin nor formula that would allow me to decompose images into non-pure CMYK colors. Could you advise me a solution?

Thank you,

Martin.

[david.atwell]

Paint.NET doesn't work natively in CMYK. Paint.NET may not be your best choice, though someone else may have a suggestion. You'll definitely need to find a way to get the different colors on separate layers.

[Xarx]

Paint.NET doesn't work natively in CMYK. Paint.NET may not be your best choice, though someone else may have a suggestion. You'll definitely need to find a way to get the different colors on separate layers.

There's already a plugin "RGB to CMYK" that decomposes an image into 4 individual layers that together give the original image. But the problem is that the plugin uses the "pure" CMYK colors, and I need some "dirty" ones. So this plugin is not of much help to me.

Even an idea how to do it would be helpful, then I could search for a way on how to realize it (e.g. search for a plugin, use the CodeLab, search for a different program).

Martin.

[nitenurse79]

I used Magic wand set to 30% to erase the off-white background, a quick play around with curves and then hue / saturation+ finally I added a new layer, moved it under the image layer and using paint bucket to fill with white finally I flattened the image. Is this something like it?

Edited February 7, 2012 by nitenurse79

[Xarx]

Thanks nitenurse79. But I'm quite satisfied with the results from the Grim Color Reaper plugin. The main problem is the mispositioned blue/green/purple lines in the drawing - the drawing should be outlined with lines of black color, not with rainbow lines.

I mentioned the non-white background paper mainly for completeness, as it might influence the solution of the other problem, and in that way it might prevent the use of the Grim Color Reaper plugin.

Martin.

[nitenurse79]

The main problem is the mispositioned blue/green/purple lines in the drawing - the drawing should be outlined with lines of black color, not with rainbow lines.

Martin.

Is the color due to the scanning stage or have they become slightly faded due to age? Also, do you scan your images using windows live photo gallery or directly into paint.net? I ask this because I used to scan old photo's and often found that different programs on different settings (at the pre-scan stage) would influence the result. I am sure you have tried different settings but just thought I would ask. I wish I could help you further, if you do manage to find a solution, please share

[Ego Eram Reputo]

...The main problem is the mispositioned blue/green/purple lines in the drawing - the drawing should be outlined with lines of black color, not with rainbow lines.

Save yourself the effort and rescan the images. Seriously. You could spend hours trying to clean them up with Paint.NET, but you're still going to have them in an RGB colorspace and not your desired CYMK.

If you cannot improve the images via rescanning then try scanning them in black and white - this will save you time whaen you come to recolor them.

To quickly improve color saturation:

1. Adjustments | Hue / Saturation. Move the Saturation slider up to suit.

or

2. Duplicate the layer :DuplicateLayer: and set the blend mode of the upper layer to Multiply (press F4 to access the layer properties). Merge upper layer into lower with :MergeLayerDown:

[Xarx]

Save yourself the effort and rescan the images. Seriously. You could spend hours trying to clean them up with Paint.NET, but you're still going to have them in an RGB colorspace and not your desired CYMK.

I owe the originals, so I can rescan them again. But how will it help? If I don't change any scanning parameters, I shall get the same results.

Should I scan to CMYK directly? How? Will it then cope with the non-pure CMYK colors so that I can re-position and fit them correctly?

Martin.

[Xarx]

Is the color due to the scanning stage or have they become slightly faded due to age?

Neither :-). The originals were this badly printed :-(. The paper color turned to grey-yellow due to age (the magazines are 30 to 50 years old).

Also, do you scan your images using windows live photo gallery or directly into paint.net? I ask this because I used to scan old photo's and often found that different programs on different settings (at the pre-scan stage) would influence the result.

To be honest, I didn't try many programs. All programs I have use the same Windows scanning component as Paint.Net does, and there is not much to set. I don't have any program that has direct access to the scanner (or at least I don't know about any).

But as I've said, the problem is already in the originals, not in the scanning process, so I don't thing that changing the scanning program would help much. Only if it allowed to scan directly to CMYK or some other advanced scanning settings.

Martin.