Selecting black text for improvement?

[terrypin]

Quite often I capture a small part of a map which would look satisfactory when shown full screen if it wasn't for the poor text. Here's a typical example:



I'm sure I could make some progress with this if I could somehow select all the text. (And other black pixels too, like tracks and road edges, as they would also benefit from improvement.)

I'd like to remove the text blurriness, so that it looks as close to 'normal' as possible, as in the small example here:



Any suggestions on how to do this in PSP8 would be much appreciated please.

The example is uploaded here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/401 ... Text-1.jpg

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[Grazie]

First off, how did you capture your image? Scan or what? What Reso did you scan with?

Secondly, I tried with 5 Compositing Layers in X8. This any good?:

View of Layers:

G

[terrypin]

Thanks Grazie. To get an image like that previous example I zoom in on an area in my mapping program and use Snagit to capture it. Here's another:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/401 ... Text-5.jpg
which you see is 1611 x 1058. I might then crop it a bit before using it as part of a video.

Your result looks great, but can you step me through it please? How did you make those 'compositing layers'? What did you do to them? In PSP 8 I have these options for my background layer:



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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[Grazie]

Hi Terry,

I created the Project in Corel X8. Now that I'm realizing that you use PSP8, I saved a COPY in PSP8 Compatible. Let's see if that works. Once you open it up make sure you are pointing the Project file to your SOURCE image, the one I used may just be part of the Project automatically already, you can then view the layers AND the various Compo Modes I used. Look at the "ordering" of the copies of the image and the type of Compo I used. All these terms have their feet firmly rooted to the Print industry, and as such have had their "digital" equivalent now as part of Photo s/w and NLEs for video editing too.

Here is the PSP8 Compatible Project file : https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/203 ... 8.pspimage

G

[terrypin]

Thanks Grazie, I now see what you've done. Bit of a revelation for me. I'm a relative novice despite many years as a PSP8 user and have never used the 'Blend mode' feature before. The few times I've attempted to study it I've been daunted by its complexity and given up!

Therefore I'm assuming it's your skill and experience that got you that result. I calculate there are over 490 million possible ways of working on a background plus five copies using only blends. (21 blend options to the power of 5, times factorial 5 for the ordering.) That's not even allowing for further trial/error with opacity levels, where I see you've adjusted 3, presumably by trial/error?

But I'll try (blindly!) to reproduce that exact pattern with another map extract . If successful and it proves amenable to a recorded script then that could indeed be a practical solution for future map extracts.

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK