How do I get an area homogeneous in colour?

[richard3396]

Hi. I've scanned a radio dial. And I'm in process of filling in the background with a pure colour (not bitty). Now, the dial markings themselves are bitty. By bitty, I mean the area is not perfectly homogeneous. How do I make an area that is not very homogenous and therefore "bitty" purely homogeneous?  Sure, you can try to bucket fill, but I think this might not work too well when the background intrudes somewhat into the area one wants to make homogeneous.  I attach a section of the radio dial showing the markings. You see they are "bitty" and rather faded. I want them far more bold and the colour homogeneous. Thanks.

Edited January 8, 2019 by richard3396

[HyReZ]

Greetings,

The effect that you refer to as 'bittyness' is called grain in a photo and noise in a digital image. 

 

I would duplicate your image and use the Eye Dropper Tool to detect the background color of the duplicate

Next I would create a new layer and fill it with your background color.
Then I would use the Grim Color Reaper plugin or the Kill Color plugin to delete the background color from your starting image.
Now you have a background layer and layer of the red dial.

You can try to increase color saturation of the dial or use the bucket at ~49% tolerance to spill color into the text and curves of the dial.

BTW: Some scanner software allow you to scan as Black and White line art and let you save as a 2 color bitmap. Then you can make the white transparent and color the black areas red.

Edited January 8, 2019 by HyReZ

[IHaveNoName]

I think the problem will be that because the radio dial 'grain' is so obvious any background colour removal will also remove parts of the lettering. particularly the faded parts, as well. That "1400" is a prime example.

 

I've just had a go at this myself with XMario's 'Cut Colour' plugin to turn the background transparent similar to HyReZ's suggestion but, as expected, it took out most of the "1400" too. I tried layering and various blending options but there is simply not enough of the "1400" or some of the others areas left to build up.

 

Same problem when creating or using any b/w masking/recolouring technique. Increasing the colour saturation does not help with the "1400" or other areas lost using any colour removal tool.

 

Maybe others here will have more ideas which might help with that.

 

As this is a relative simple image and assuming it is just this small area my solution would be a crude but ultimately better one and that is to recreate the image from scratch. The only real difficulty would be in identifying the font, that mainly due to the original dial quality. You can't create good enough images of the letters for use on any of the font identification websites I know.

Edited January 8, 2019 by IHaveNoName

[HyReZ]

My suggestion; since the graphic looks simple; is to use the scan layer as a template and recreate the dial on top of it on a new transparent layer.

Edited January 8, 2019 by HyReZ

[IHaveNoName]

Yep, concur.

 

I have also been extra helpful and pretty sure I've found the font used too: it appears to be Gill Sans - Condensed Bold. The only thing that does not match is "MOTALA" which appears to be more condensed in the original but is certainly not the Gill Sans - Extra Condensed Bold version you can also find. Custom 'squishing' of fonts for use on dials/switches etc is not unusual.

 

Easier to identify than I thought it would be.

Edited January 8, 2019 by IHaveNoName

[richard3396]

The dial is English and is part of a Defiant MSH971 radio set, circa 1939. As to the Gill Sans: " Gill Sans is a sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards. Gill Sans is based on Edward Johnston's 1916 "Underground Alphabet", the corporate font of London Underground. Gill as a young artist had assisted Johnston in its early development stages. " (Wikipedia).

Edited January 9, 2019 by richard3396

[richard3396]

Thanks for the heads up. I've decided to re-create the dial. I have three layers,: The background to use as a template, a layer above that with the background colour to the markings, and a layer above that containing the markings.  If I need more assistance I will post. Thanks.

[HyReZ]

@richard3396

After looking at images of the Defiant MSH97  I see that the dial is a little more involved than I thought, but now that you have the font nfo;

you should be able to use the Line / Curve Tool and your template to do a good job of replicating the look of the original dial. Good Look!
 

Edited January 9, 2019 by HyReZ

[IHaveNoName]

Pleased I identified the font correctly and that it all fits perfectly with the age of the radio set too.

 

I actually know a bit about Eric Gill without having to Google :) but I didn't actually think of him in relation to the Gill Sans font which is pretty dim of me so thanks for that extra info. It is also a strange coincidence that I've been using the open source Railway Sans font, based on Johnston's original London Underground design, very recently. 

Edited January 10, 2019 by IHaveNoName