Help with Paint Shop Pro Ultimate X2 (I know it's old, lol)

[whatthuf]

Hi,
Ok, so I scan a document in greyscale ( I don't want to do it in black and white because the pictures don't look right, looks better scanned in greyscale). Then I use flood fill to change the whole page white. My problem is, that the letters D, R, A, e, etc. don't get filled when I do the whole page since they are sealed letters. What I mean by that is the inside of the letter D for example, is still grey instead of white. Since I purchased the program years ago, I've been using flood fill on each letter, which takes a lot of time. Is there a way to set it to where it would make the grey inside the letters white instead of doing it with flood fill every letter? The way I'm doing it now takes a lot of time and I'm hoping there is an easier way to do this that won't take near as long (last night I did a 24 page document and it took me over 8 hours to change all the sealed letters from grey to white). I know it's an old program, but upgrading to the newest version isn't possible right now. Thanks for any help!!! Have a great weekend!!!

[LeviFiction]

Use the Magic Wand tool, with a low tolerance (very low) and make sure "contiguous" is turned off. Contiguous means that the pixels have to be touching, so it won't fix your closed letter problem.

Then use the flood fill.

Or You can use any of the brightness/contrast commands to make the page more white eliminating the grey, though you may have to use a selection that excludes the pictures as it might make them look bad.

You can use Curves, and sample the black and white points and it could correct for this easily.

[whatthuf]

Thanks!!! I'm just glad there's a way to do it that'll make everything faster. I appreciate it!!!

[Rick_R]

Additional things you can try are adjustment layers and especially a histogram adjustment layer. You can do the same things with adjustment layers (e.g., brightness/contrast) that you can do with the basic tool. The advantage of adjustment layers is they don't actually change the image. That way, you can have multiple choices (e.g., a brightness/contrast layer of +/-20, another for 40, etc.) and then select the one(s) you want.

Also, if you do use either a brightness/contrast or histogram adjustment layer, after you think you've got it as good as you can, try duplicating the layer. I've often been surprised how much that improves the result.

Basically on a grayscale histogram, moving the black triangle right makes the whole image darker, moving the white triangle left makes the lighter parts brighter, and moving the gray triangle in the middle darkens or lightens the middle tones. It's particularly good for improving grayscale document images -- frequently much better than just a brightness/contrast change.