brightness and contrast of a scanned multipage pdf file

[plutonak]

Hello,

I have a pdf file containing multiple scanned images. I would like to improve the quality of the pages altogether by increasing the contrast and decreasing the brightness. It would be nice to modify them all at once and not page by page. I first wanted to use Photoshop for this purpose but it looks like it is not that straightforward. It also looks like there is not such available feature in Acrobat but you may be aware of a nice and efficient technique.

Thanks

[Guest · Accepted solution]

I have seen this question asked several times in various forums and it never gets an answer.  If you have Photoshop, there is a solution to the problem, which does not require adjusting every page in a document.  I use a high-speed duplex hopper-fed scanner to copy books or articles I need for my school work (no, I don't violate copyright by giving them away).  There is no way to adjust contrast at the scanner level, so I end up with a 700-page document that is too light or too dark.

1.  Use Acrobat to extract all the pages to separate files.

2.  Use Adobe Bridge Tools>Rename to serially rename all the pages, so that Photoshop sees them in the right order and they can be reassembled later.  There are other free or cheap tools for batch renaming that work equally well.

3.  Experiment with your settings on a sample page in Photoshop, until you find one that works.  I usually use auto-contrast, or adjust the curves myself.

4.  Perform whatever other manipulation you need to on the document page, such as resizing or changing mode to greyscale.

5.  Create an action following the same steps.

6.  Run a batch process on all the pages in your undone folder, saving them to a done folder.  Override the Open and Save settings to avoid dialogue boxes and so on.

7.  Reassemble the document from the individual pages using the Combine function in Acrobat.

I use this method frequently, making small adjustments to the action as necessary.  It takes a while to do a large document, but it solves a lot of problems.  One problem that is very hard to solve, however, is caused by printing on cheap paper, which makes the scans come out blotchy and grey, and very hard to re-contrast without losing resolution.  Acrobat can help solve this problem sometimes with the Optimize document functions, but in general, it's easier to scan better, whiter paper than rescue it later.  One solution is to scan only one side at a time, and then use a third-party PDF tool to interleave the pages.

If you have a lot of documents to do that can use more or less the same settings, create a Droplet macro in Photoshop and drag your page folders to it, instead of running a batch.

Hope that helps.

[plutonak]

Thank you for your detailed answer. I understand what is described. I still think it would be nice to see a contrast/brightness/color feature directly included in acrobat. I'll also have a look at the droplet macro that I do not know.

[Millicent Bystander]

it was amazing to see how this is the closest thing you ever received resembling a straight answer. the answer was "no, you can not change contrast on a pdf document on adobe. truly amazing how many suggestions were made that required you to have a different os, more expensive software, be in a different time zone with a full or new moon, or use 6.94 Volts of electricity from a power supply manufactured in pawnee, indiana (by ron swanson). hope you finally realized that best solution was to abandon windows and get linux. come on in, the water is fine!

[Mattee1960]

Thanks !!!  You taught me exactly what I needed to process one form of my Library creation project.  To deal with Greyed out books, your advice is spot on!  I knew of none of the things you mentioned.... From your help, I can now create an "Action" in Photoshop, and apply it to a "Batch " set of drawings,  not really that hard!  I am now batch processing a 1850 page ebook that was too light to read well.  Just think how hard that would be if I did it Page by Page! 

Thanks !!!!  Mattee