'smoothing' line drawing

[mike]

I have a set of line drawings made in dark pencil on white paper. Sopme
of the paper is a little creased and marked - generally the worse for
wear, and some of the lines are relatively faint. I have been attempting
to convert them into 'tidy' b and w line drawings with photoshop.
Playing with levels, I can get rid of most of the creases and marls, but
I would like the lines to appear smooth, evenly dark and unbroken. Any
advice on how to convert lines of varying intensities to even smooth
dark lines?

Mike

[Jamie]

Post by mike
I have a set of line drawings made in dark pencil on white paper. Sopme
of the paper is a little creased and marked - generally the worse for
wear, and some of the lines are relatively faint. I have been attempting
to convert them into 'tidy' b and w line drawings with photoshop.
Playing with levels, I can get rid of most of the creases and marls, but
I would like the lines to appear smooth, evenly dark and unbroken. Any
advice on how to convert lines of varying intensities to even smooth
dark lines?
Mike

A program can be written to do that how ever, are you really up to it?

the image can be scanned like you obviously are doing, then converted
to a 2 level color image.. this will put the threshold of the area's at
50 % shade level. Of course, doing this in custom software, you can
actually set your levels.


Also, your scanner should be able to scan the doc in a 2 color level
which will bring it closer to what you need.

[Maarten Wiltink]

Post by mike
I have a set of line drawings made in dark pencil on white paper.
Sopme of the paper is a little creased and marked - generally the
worse for wear, and some of the lines are relatively faint. I have been
attempting to convert them into 'tidy' b and w line drawings with
photoshop. Playing with levels, I can get rid of most of the creases
and marls, but I would like the lines to appear smooth, evenly dark and
unbroken. Any advice on how to convert lines of varying intensities to
even smooth dark lines?

There are probably areas of grey in the picture that must become white
in the end, being creases originally, and also areas of grey that must
become black, being lines originally. You need to transport information
from the surrounding area to those pixels.

One possibility is to start with a tresholding operation that takes out
both types of grey, then blur the lines (this is where the transport
happens) and threshold again. But that can only restore small gaps in
the lines, or it will make the lines thicker.

Perhaps a better option might be to use a less sensitive threshold to
begin with and manually erase artefacts.

Groetjes,
Maarten Wiltink

[Rudy Velthuis]

Post by mike
I have a set of line drawings made in dark pencil on white paper.
Sopme of the paper is a little creased and marked - generally the
worse for wear, and some of the lines are relatively faint. I have
been attempting to convert them into 'tidy' b and w line drawings
with photoshop. Playing with levels, I can get rid of most of the
creases and marls, but I would like the lines to appear smooth,
evenly dark and unbroken. Any advice on how to convert lines of
varying intensities to even smooth dark lines?

Use a program like Inkscape (free) or Illustrator (Adobe) to trace the
lines and produce a vector drawing (tracing is quite simple, especially
in Inkscape). That will give you the best kind of control you want.

Many examples of how a pro does that (using Illustrator and a plugin
that does the same as how I would do it directly in Inkscape) can be
found here:

http://www.illustrationclass.com/

[mike]

Post by mike
I have a set of line drawings made in dark pencil on white paper. Sopme
of the paper is a little creased and marked - generally the worse for
wear, and some of the lines are relatively faint. I have been attempting
to convert them into 'tidy' b and w line drawings with photoshop.
Playing with levels, I can get rid of most of the creases and marls, but
I would like the lines to appear smooth, evenly dark and unbroken. Any
advice on how to convert lines of varying intensities to even smooth
dark lines?
Mike

Sorry all, and thanks for the advice - I inadvertantly posted this to
the wrong group...:(