You might find it worth trying 'digikam' first if you have many pages to process and are more interested in legibility than final aesthetic appearance.
I've used it a lot for "restoring" old documents: Image=>Edit=>Color=>Auto-correction offers you 4 types of correction. One or other of these will usually improve matters considerably. I use gimp only for the occasionally necessary final tweak or particularly difficult document. Doug James wrote: > Hi. I have an elderly friend whose father kept a diary during WW2. The diary > is written in pencil on poor quality paper that has yellowed considerably with > age. The text is still pretty legible but as time passes it will become less > so. I decided I could photograph pages of the diary and enhance them using > Gimp. The final result should be something that can be printed out on a > computer printer, i.e., greyscale/b&w. I took the photos in color, thinking > I'd have more manipulation options, then could make the images greyscale. > > I'm not any kind of gimp power user or anything--I usually just feel my way > around the program and usually get it to do the fairly simple graphic > manipulations I want. So far, that method has not worked well for this > project. So I'd like to ask some tips here on accomplishing the goal I'm > after. Ideally, I'd like all the yellowed paper that forms the background of > these images to turn as close to white as possible, while all the pencil text > should be as close to black as possible. Can anyone point me to things I can > try under gimp that will help me accomplish these aims? > _______________________________________________ Gimp-user mailing list Gimp-user@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user
