User talk:Eleeguy

You asked:"I have a HP Scanjet 4850 and I run a Mac G4. My previous scanner had a feature that, when scanning photos from newspapers, would 'blend' the print dots so the resulting scanned photo would be smooth rather than a bunch of various sized and shaded dots. I don't see how I can do that with this scanner. I have been frustrated by going to the HP site for help. Does anyone know if there is a way I can achieve this result. By the way, I usually scan into photoshop. (Eleeguy (talk) 15:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC))"


 * [1] place the page to be scanned on the scanner at an angle, say 15° from vertical, and scan it into Photoshop
 * [2] apply a Gaussian blur filter (with a radius of 1-2 pixels: play around to see what looks best, and don't forget that you can use decimals like 1.2 pixels)
 * [3] use "Straighten Image" to, well, straighten the image
 * [4] crop it and save the result.

Obviously you lose a little detail when you apply the gaussian blur; but you can scan at a higher DPI initially to help offset this.

What you're doing is called "manual descreening" and if you do a Google search on "Photoshop manual descreening" you'll get lots of other "recipes". Basically:
 * 1) . scan at at least double your desired final resolution
 * 2) . apply a blur or despeckle filter
 * 3) . resample to the final resolution
 * 4) . use a sharpening filter (unsharp mask)

-- Nunh-huh 09:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)