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Question

Printing so paper is the white area - Photoshop

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
July 26, 2019
8 replies
2450 views

I'm pretty new to Photoshop in the modern world and struggling to get to grips with some basics.

I have a set of nautical pencil drawings that are about 50 years old that I need to prepare to print. I have the images in RAW format.

The paper has become discoloured over the years and I believe I should be able to select the area of off-white, so this does not get printed on and the printer paper is the white for this area. My attempts to adjust the colour to a suitable white have resulted in greys and creams that I need to lose.

Could anyone point me in the write direction. It's a steep learning curve.

Message was edited by: Sahil Chawla

This topic has been closed for replies.

Norman Sanders

Legend

One last consideration regarding my last post. Watercolor. If you were to assume the original drawing employed (transparent) watercolor on colored paper or the discoloration affected the sail colors, by switching to Lab Color and eliminating the paper value from the sails, this would be the result. I thought that would interest you.

Norman Sanders

Legend

f

Hard as it may be to believe, the sails are the same color in both versions. (Click on image for larger view) As shown, two values were marked on an additional image layer and then Curves was used to create a large difference in tones. It looked like this:

That made the making a selection of the sails easier. The selection was applied to the unaltered image layer and the sails were placed as a layer above the boat layer as Layer 1.

Then the method I described earlier (Post 10) was used without risking the sail value.

(Layer 0 copy was used only for reference when the job was done.)

CraigosAuthor

Participating Frequently

Sorry for the delay.

This is one of the images. I've reduced the size to get it tip here.

JJMack

Community Expert

It would be better if you had not reduces the size of the image. It would have been if you posted a small 100% image crop of the image would give us an example of the actual pixel image quality you have. Resampling an image creates a new image its not the image you will be working on. Its a completely a different image every pixel in the image was interpolate from the images you have and a lot of details have been lost during this downsizing. It looks like you have a high quality image using some of Photoshop adjustment tool will restore much of the image apeaencs and it should be easy to clean up its white background. Its easy to kill white.

JJMack

CraigosAuthor

Participating Frequently

That is an amazing transformation. Just what I am trying to achieve.

Is this just done by Adjustment , replace colour? When you print this, does the printer now recognise that the white area does not need any colour. Thanks for you advice!

Norman Sanders

Legend

Please post the image. Short of that...

Much depends upon the difference in tone valued between the paper and the lightest meaningful tone in the map.

If it is slight, consider Blend If command.

Open the image;

If there is a lock on the background layer holding the image, trash the lock by clicking on it or dragging it to the Trash

Place a transparent layer below the image layer and Edit > Fill it with white

Double click on the image layer to bring up Layer Style

In the Blend If section, gently move the top right slider to the left until the paper color disappears.

If the difference in tone between the paper and the lightest meaningful tone of the map is very slight, you may split the slider for greater accuracy. . Hold down the Option key and click and drag the left side of the slider to the left. Consider it a slow fine tuning of the adjustment.

Save as psd file and then choose Layers > Merge Down and save as jpg of desired.

CraigosAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks for the info.

I think maybe the white is too gray on my image. If I try this fix it removes other parts of the image.

Derek Cross

Community Expert

Bear in mind, with some vintage images, keeping some of the aged background lends verisimilitude to the image.

davescm

Community Expert

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Derek+Cross wrote
Bear in mind, with some vintage images, keeping some of the aged background lends verisimilitude to the image.

I agree with you, and I just learnt a new word Derek

Dave

Derek Cross

Community Expert

I love that word, I sprinkle it into any sentence when I get the chance!

Sahil.Chawla

Adobe Employee

Hi Craig,

I believe first you have to restore the old images. Could you please share a screenshot here? So that we have a better understanding?

Could you please check this video and let us know if it helps?

How to Repair and Colorize Old Photos (Adobe Photoshop CC Tutorial) - YouTube

Regards,
Sahil

JJMack

Community Expert

It is always good to post an example of an image like you want to process. It does not need to be Camera RAW file of the your pencil drawing. I do not think starting with a RAW capture will be any better then starting with a JPEG from you camera. Jpeg are easy to post here. You may be able to clean up the drawing image using a Photoshop filter or some Photoshop features but how you do it will depends on you image's content. We need to see what you have to work from.