cleaning text image from ancient microfilm

[rnmerchant]

Dear All:

I've a little project I'm working on - of extracting some information from quite elderly microfilm files, of even more elderly newspapers. This project involves the "British Columbian" newspaper from 1862, which was microfilmed many years ago (and not yet digitized). The microfilm reader scans and outputs images (the whole page or sections) from the view on the screen, onto a USB. As you might imagine, the quality isn't all that great. I didn't adjust the settings on the scanner device - just used the defaults.

Basically they are relatively soft images, black and white (albiet in RGB color) with lots of artefact. I've attached a sample.

I've attempted to tidy them by adjusting contrast and histogram up and down and made some improvement but nothing seems to affect the artefact very much. I guess AI models are not trained on elderly newspaper text to automate this for the lazy... Anyone have any suggestions as to how one might go about cleaning these images without doing it all manually? I don't expect to be able to get rid of those big 'scratches' but it would be nice if the background 'pebble' would go away....

Thanks Richard

[Jean-Luc]

Something like this?

BritishColumbian1862-032-.jpg

[Radim]

If you have scanned images perhaps can help some cleaning software.

In past, when I scanned paper books I used ScanTailor (freeware) - to cut pages, cleanup grayed corners, correct rotation etc.:
https://github.com/scantailor/scantailor/releases
info - https://github.com/scantailor/scantailo ... irst-start

there is also newer version, but I newer used it:
https://github.com/4lex4/scantailor-advanced/releases

and some similar, but commercial program:
https://paperscan.orpalis.com/

Look, if it can help.

[rnmerchant]

Thanks. I'll have a look at Scantailor.

Though it would be nice to be able to work within Paintshop unless Scantailor does it all (which it may do and that would be fine!!)

Richard

[ConalO]

I am assuming you want to remove the Moire like pattern on the background of this image?
I used Adjust>Add/Remove Noise>Moire Pattern Removal at settings 14 and 4 and then duplicated the layer and set to Overlay.
I then duplicated this new layer two more times to get the attached image.
You can clean this up further with the clone tool.

[rnmerchant]

Thanks. That's obviously much better.
I tried the moire tool but not with layers and multiple times. I'll give it a try and see if I can get anything like those results!

[Jean-Luc]

My attempt.

1. Apply the Salt and Pepper Filter:

Salt and Pepper Filter.jpg

2. Apply an Histogram Adjustment:

Histo adjust layer.jpg

3. Result:

BC.jpg