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KURTIS2182769596a1
Inspiring
April 21, 2022
Answered

Crop & Straighten newspaper scans

  • April 21, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 1948 views

I have a year of scanned images, almost 600, of old newspapers that I want to crop & straighten. The script in PS does nothing to any of the images I have tried.

 

From a discussion elsewhere I have resorted to using Camera Raw filter > geomatry and the align vertical & horizantal tool. This works for most but for some reason the ones that are straight get rotated a few degrees and end up worse than the original. 

 

If and when I get them straight what would be the best way to crop to the white newspaper edge. 

 

I can't set any Crop tool presets, is this fixed yet?

 

Any ideas for a great workflow would be very appreciated. 

 

Here is a sample image.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer KURTIS2182769596a1

Thanks, 

I don't know why they used that background and yes they are images of original paper done by my client. Usually we get the original or the microfische/film to digitize but they wouldn't release the originals to us.

 

I just was adding a pause step to an action and realize your perspective tool may be faster. Using a batch automation of Camara raw filter to straighten takes about 30 minutes for 100 images. 

 

Best regards.

2 replies

Conrad_C
Community Expert
Conrad_CCommunity Expert
Community Expert
April 22, 2022
@KURTIS2182769596a1 wrote:

I have a year of scanned images, almost 600, of old newspapers that I want to crop & straighten. The script in PS does nothing to any of the images I have tried.

 

If you mean the command File > Automate > Crop and Straighten Photos, that wouldn’t be expected to work well on scanned newspaper pages. It’s designed to split up a scan of multiple photo prints, where it’s easy to identify each individual photo against a white background, like the diagram below. It would break that up into five separately cropped and straightened photo files.

 

 

A newspaper is different than a photo print because a newspaper is a mix of white space, text, lines, and photos. That is not what Crop and Straighten Photos is designed to look for, so it will probably fragment the page into lots of little pieces.

 

I like c.pfaffenbichler’s idea to use the Perspective Crop tool; it’s probably the next method you should try. You simply drag the tool rectangle corners to match the distorted newspaper’s corners, and when applied, it straightens all sides at once. See demo below.

 

    c.pfaffenbichler
    Community Expert
    c.pfaffenbichlerCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 21, 2022

    In the future you (or whoever did them) may want to scan properly – so no striped backgrounds. 

    Actually I wonder is that is a scan at all or a photograph. 

     

    I suspect you may have to crop the files manually, possibly with the Perspective Crop Tool. 

     

     

     

      K
      KURTIS2182769596a1AuthorCorrect answer
      Inspiring
      April 21, 2022

      Thanks, 

      I don't know why they used that background and yes they are images of original paper done by my client. Usually we get the original or the microfische/film to digitize but they wouldn't release the originals to us.

       

      I just was adding a pause step to an action and realize your perspective tool may be faster. Using a batch automation of Camara raw filter to straighten takes about 30 minutes for 100 images. 

       

      Best regards.

        Conrad_C
        Community Expert
        Conrad_CCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        April 22, 2022

        A potential problem with the Perspective Crop tool is that the customized crop rectangle can’t be saved as a preset, so you do have to do that manually for each of the almost 600 scans. If the distortions are consistent enough that a batch automation in Camera Filter takes less manual work, then maybe that is the best solution.

         

        If the scans are TIFF or JPEG images, one thing that could speed it up is cutting Photoshop out of the loop entirely. Set up Camera Raw preferences (File Handling tab) to open TIFF or JPEG images, select all 600 scans in Bridge, open them directly from Bridge into Camera Raw (File > Open in Camera Raw), apply the Geometry adjustment to all of them, then save all of them at once. Batch operations in Camera Raw (or Lightroom Classic) tend to run much faster than an equivalent Photoshop action.

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