Scanned Photos/Matte Finish

[fndooley]

Okay, major PSP8 novice. Just upgraded a couple weeks ago and loving it. However, driving me nuts trying to figure out how to remove those pesky little squiggles you get on a scanned matte finish pic. There has to be an easier way. The help index even specifically calls it out, but then just says to select the remove noise feature. Done this many (stupidly many) times and it helps, but just a little. I am not going to clone a million squiggles. One of you guys knows what I am doing wrong, I am sure, and I will be forever in your debt.
There is a sample enclosed: example.jpg. Could not figure out how to embed in the post here even though there is a button on top that says insert Img. Somebody could help me with what I am doing wrong there too.

[hartpaul]

Best thing is to upload a sample pic so others can see the problem and then test out what works. Otherwise we can spend lots of posts and suggestions based on inaccuracy in describing the problem.

[fndooley]

Okay, will upload tonight when I get off work. Since it was listed out in the Corel Help "remove noise" topic specifically as removing noise from matte finish scanned photo's I thought everybody would know exactly what it is. But a picture is always worth a thousand words and will take your advice. Thanks in advance.

[fndooley]

Was hoping this forum would help me better learn and utilize program I bought. Guess not.

[hartpaul]

Patience.
This may not be possible with your scans.
I note that your image was 640 x 508 pixels and to me it seemed to be very pixelated as well.

Are you scanning from 6 x 4 inch prints? If so any defects including the patterning from silk surfaces will be emphasised when scanning to larger sizes.
(ie you cannot get detail where there is insufficient to begin with).


What version of PSP are you using.

The patterning is most noticeble in the darker areas because of the difference in contrast.

You might try in your layers palette, duplicating the layer and then change the blend mode to multiply. This will make the image seem richer and with more contrast as well as darkening the darker areas.
I tried using the Salt and Pepper filter, but as mentiioned if the image is pixelated it just blurs it too much.

[photodrawken]

This is a very difficult image to correct. De-noising is always a compromise between blurring the image sufficiently to remove most of the noise but not blurring too much so that the details are lost.

The surface pattern is not only more noticeable along the edges (which are also the darkest parts), but also at various places in the image, as if the original photo was not perfectly flat against the scanner's glass.

Because of the "Garbage In, Garbage Out" property of Life, the best solution would be to re-scan the photo, first gently ironing it to ensure it's flat, then spraying a non-reflective coating on it before doing the scan.

Having said that, the original image you supplied can be corrected so that it's "good enough", but I suspect that the tools available in any general-purpose image editor such as PSP or PhotoLine won't be sufficient, and I resorted to an external application. I'll leave it to others who might have 3rd party de-noising apps/plugins to see if those also yield good results, but for what it's worth, I did this (my image editor of choice is PhotoLine, but I think most of the techniques should be applicable to PSP):

1. Opened the image in PL, and converted it to 16-bit to avoid any possible artifacts that might be introduced when working on an 8-bit image.
2. Saved the image as a 16-bit TIF.
3. Opened that TIF in RawTherapee.
4. Used a whole slew of wavelet tools and wavelet de-noising tools in RT to remove as much of the pattern as possible while still retaining the details.
5. Saved that RT image as a 16-bit TIF (under a new name).
6. The RT image still had noticeable patterns in some areas, so I opened it in PhotoLine and painted a mask to define the areas that still needed some more de-noising:

   

7. Applied the De-Noise filter to those areas.
8. The pattern was still visible in the darkest areas, so I added a Curves adjustment layer using Lab mode so I could alter the curve of the Lightness channel to further darken only the darkest areas without affecting the colours.

The result:

[Jean-Luc]

Was hoping this forum would help me better learn and utilize program I bought. Guess not.

Could you post a better scanned image? Your image is too small for applying the correction tools. Please, scan at 600 dpi and send us the new scanned picture (scan in PNG format or TIFF or BMP but never in JPEG). I could propose two solutions if image is bigger. Don't resize image after scan. Make the scan immediately at 600 DPI.
What I did with an old photo on "silk" photo paper:

silk correction.jpg (47.95 KiB) Viewed 6751 times

[fndooley]

hartpaul/photodrawken/jen-luc:
thank you each for your replies and may I apologize for my lack of patience. a skillset I desperately need to work on. it would be helpful if I could reply to each of you individually, but I did not see where the forum allowed me to do that. (am I missing something?) the original image was an 8x10 scanned at 600DPI in TIFF format. I could not post it that size though because the board would not let me. Said the file was too big. So I made a copy and saved as a jpg so I could post. I know it is small and there is not enough there to work with to make any real adjustments. All three of you have a skillset that far exceeds my own, but I am keen to learn. That is why I am here.

[Ken Berry]

I could not post it that size though because the board would not let me. Said the file was too big. So I made a copy and saved as a jpg so I could post. I know it is small and there is not enough there to work with to make any real adjustments.

You could always post the large photo to a site like Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox or something similar, then post a link here. That way at least people could access the original and play around with that. Some people also make their email address available. If it's there it looks like a little envelope below their personal details and avatar to the right of their posts.

But we would be grateful if you did not use emails to continue the conversation(s) as that would cut out all other users who might be interested in the discussion and outcome.

[photodrawken]

I know it is small and there is not enough there to work with to make any real adjustments.

Not entirely true, as I showed.

Don't hesitate to keep asking questions and experimenting -- that's how everyone acquired their "skill sets".

If there's one thing I've learned, it's the importance of being flexible. That means not being "locked in" to using only one image editing application and attempting to use it for everything. As your supplied image demonstrated, there will invariably be times when one has to resort to other tools to get the job done. (In this case, wavelet processing happened to provide real and substantial benefits....)

In short, welcome to the wonderful world of digital imaging! It's actually kind of fun to learn the strengths and weaknesses of various apps and then choose the right tool for the right job.

[hartpaul]

Even if the picture you scanned was 6000 x 4800 , it should have been possible to do a crop of an area (s) you are concerned with so that they could be posted and we could work on these. Then the pixellation would not override the pattern of the silk print. There is no real need for us to see the whole picture, just a couple of full size sections that you are concerned with.
Or as has been mentioned place the full size image in an online receptacle that we can access.

[fndooley]

alright, thanks folks. your going to laugh, but the online dropbox you are talking about is news to me. will check it out immediately. thanks for all the insightful suggestions...

[brucet]

Moire is always a problem when scanning printed photos. A higher resolution scan can often mean a more serious problems. Many scanners have an anti moire setting that can help.
I suggest you do a Google of the subject. Often a lower quality scan will be the answer.

regards