Cleaning a grayscale score?

[andrewt]

I just scanned this (http://imslp.org/wiki/Impromptu,_Op.13_ ... Wilhelm%29). The score is in really bad shape, with a lot of tape and tears, etc. I had to scan it in grayscale for legibility. Is there anything I can do to clean it up (erasing the tape, tears, etc.)? If I just erase it, it's white, obviously, and looks pretty bad.

[daphnis]

You didn't have to scan it in as grayscale. Depending on what hard/software you use, you can set a threshold level which controls what colors are interpreted as black. With the right levels, this would have looked fine. The best option is to re-scan in black and white with correct settings for that score.

[KGill]

Or to convert the scan you already uploaded to B/W using IrfanView (free) and do some manual cleaning.

[daphnis]

Doing that rarely yields good results. And in any case, re-scanning it, especially when you only have a couple pages invested in it, will be much preferable.

[andrewt]

OK, I'll re-scan it and see what happens. Thanks.

[andrewt]

BTW, how do you convert images to B/W in Irfanview? I see a convert to grayscale option, but not to B/W

[daphnis]

Change Color Depth. 1 BPP (bit per pixel).

[andrewt]

OK, I re-scanned it, played with the threshold setting, and cleaned it manually and it looks much better now. Thanks!

[WilliamBunting]

Could you wise advisors tell me how to improve my cleaned grayscale effort.

Thanks to a contributor's advice I cleaned up Bargiel's op 19 Sicilienne (suitable for violin or viola). I used Gimp for the first time, converting from RGB to Gray, then using posterize with 3 colors. I saved it as bmp then converted to pdf and uploaded it to IMSLP.

To my mind the result is improved but still looking a bit waterlogged.

[daphnis]

Can you give us a link? I see no opus 19 on Bargiel's page.

[WilliamBunting]

Thank you Daphnis
Sorry, it's actually op 17:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Suite_for_Violin_ ... _Woldemar)

[daphnis]

William, can you tell me what you used as a source? Someone else's scans? Your own? It looks like the part is a cut-and-paste from the score. In any case, I'm sorry to have to be honest that it looks extremely poor. I could not at all play from this part and only barely make out the score. My recommendation is to simply re-scan the source material in the proper format rather than try to doctor these scans up.

[kalliwoda]

The main problem with your scan is the low resolution, it is now only 100dpi. No way you can gain clarity by modifying this file.

If you scanned this yourself, you should reset your scanner to a higher resolution: 150dpi as the absolute minimum, better 300dpi and 600dpi for high quality scans. Also, a greyscale or color scan has more depth information than the corresponding b/w monochrome file, so if you plan to finally convert to monochrome you can increase clarity by converting a 300dpi color scan to 600dpi b/w (or 150dpi greyscale to 300dpi b/w).

You can find general scanning instructions on the imslp contributor page "http://imslp.org/wiki/IMSLP:Scanning_music_scores"

[WilliamBunting]

Daphnis

I agree the result is pretty useless- hence the need for advice.

The "original" came from IMSLP- the complete Bargiel Op 17. In other words, re-scanning the work from the original paper version is out of the question.

The hand-made vl part is there because since the score lacks a vl part I printed out my slightly improved version, cut it up with scissors and rescanned it

A similar discolored set of material is available from the univ of Jena. It includes some arcane but useful works for the viola enthusiast such as Gorings's and Hofmann's studies and Herzogenberg's Legenden. If I can succeed in downloading them I'll need to clean them up.

I have a new Windows 7 laptop.

[kalliwoda]

Ah, you only used the title page from a different source?? a bit confusing.

If you start from the BSB scan on imslp (200 dpi color), I just downloaded an example of the two pages after cleanup.
What I did:
Separate pages into single page files, open in Photoshop 7 (other programs will do), converted to greyscale, cropped.
Increased image size to 1200dpi (600 dpi may be sufficient), deskewed manually, chose a splitpoint for b/w conversion (180), resized to 600 dpi on A4, run a 2-point dust filter and converted to monochrome b/w (there is a program that deskews and filters automatically under windows: "ScanTailor"). Finally I removed manually a few specks. (7 min. per page)

You may also have a look at instructions Generoso gave me a while back to batchconvert SBB files:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4667&p=24812&hilit=neukomm#p24817