Photoshop

Tricks,

Volume 4
How to Enhance Low-Resolution and
Pre-Screened Public Domain Images

By Tony Laidig
www.publicdomainblog.com
www.publicdomaintoolbar.com
www.publicdomainmagazinesecrets.com
www.tonysyardsale.com
 LEGAL NOTICE
© 2008 – Tony Laidig. All rights reserved.

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In practical advice books, like anything else in life, there are no guarantees of
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Photoshop Tricks, Volume 4
How to Enhance Low-Resolution and Pre-Screened Public Domain Images

If you’ve worked with many images from the Public Domain, you’ve most likely
encountered the issues I’m going to address in this fourth installment of
Photoshop Tricks. Many of the images that you find online from the Public
Domain are at a low resolution…most images are like that actually. And if you
want to make physical prints or physical products, most of these low-res images
are worthless…rather they WERE worthless, because I’m going to show you how
to enhance them in some really cool ways in this report.

I’m also going to talk about another image problem you’re bound to encounter
when using Public Domain images—pre-screened images. These are images
that have already been printed using a halftone process of one sort or another,
resulting in hundreds of multi-colored, tiny little dots that make using these
images extremely difficult. Well, as you’ve probably guessed by now, I’m going to
show you a couple tricks to say goodbye to those dots once and for all!

See Dot Run

I recently purchased a Children’s book solely for the illustrations. The book came
with 45 amazing, full-color illustrations that inspired me. There was just one
problem…the illustrations were halftone prints, which meant that reproducing
them, even at 100%, would be challenging because of the dot patterns.
Fortunately, I know a few tricks that can fix that problem in some artsy ways, so I
wasn’t too worried. To show you how I approached the problem and how I
addressed it, I picked one of the illustrations from that Children’s book, however,
these tricks will work with ANY halftone or pre-screened image.

First a few qualifiers…there is NO way to completely remove the halftone

patterns from a pre-screened image without affecting the sharpness of the
image. That’s just the way it is. But the cool thing is that by using the tricks I’m
going to show you, the new, hybrid version of the image will be copyrightable
because of the creative effort you’ve applied to it…and that’s a good thing. Also,
these tricks will give you the ability to enlarge the original image to many times its
original size. That’s a good thing too, especially if you plan to make poster prints.
With that said, let’s get started.

The very first thing I had to do with the image was to scan it into Photoshop. I
scanned the image at 100% at 600dpi. I use that scanning resolution as my
minimum resolution; however, 800 dpi or 1200dpi will also work. I would NOT
recommend using any resolution less than 600 dpi. The files will be larger, but
that’s okay.

Once the scan was complete, the image imported into Photoshop and the results
were certainly less than stellar. Here is a close-up of the resulting scan.
You can see what I mean about the halftone dots…yuck! It kind of looks like one
of those needlepoint patterns, and certainly doesn’t resemble anything I would
want to sell as a product.

The trick I used for this image is not a difficult one. There are only a few steps to
it. For the first step, we need to apply the “Median” filter. You will find this filter in
Photoshop under Filter => Noise => Median…. This filter removes some of the
halftone pattern by averaging the color samples to fill in the spaces that do not
have halftone dots.
You can see this averaging in action in the image below.
Notice that my setting for “Radius” is 4 pixels. I use this setting the most, but
you’re welcome to experiment to suit your own needs. Once I applied the
“Median” filter, I chose the “Angled Strokes” filter next. You will find that filter
here: Filter => Brush Strokes => Angled Strokes. The image below offers a
preview of how this filter affects our image. Notice that my settings are as follows:
Direction Balance – 50 (the default); Stroke Length – 15; Sharpness – 3. Again,
you can feel free to experiment with these settings, but these are the ones that
work best for me.

Once the filter is applied, we have the following result:

The next thing I wanted to do with the image was to increase the contrast a little
to help the colors pop a little more. To accomplish this, I first adjusted the Levels:
Image => Adjustments => Levels. Because I didn’t want to risk blowing out the
detail in the light areas, I ONLY adjusted the shadow values.
Once I applied the Levels, I adjusted the saturation some by using the Hue
Adjustment: Image => Adjustments => Hue/Saturation. Notice that I only
increased the Saturation by +20.
After applying the Hue/Saturation Adjustment, I was done…that’s it! See, I told
you this was simple, and the result is pretty cool. Here is a comparison image
that shows BEFORE and AFTER:

BTW…the boy’s face is shown at 100% so that you can see the resulting detail.
The result is pretty amazing, if you ask me. I love the “painting” feel to the image.
Here’s the best part: The original image was sized at 4.87” X 6.13”. The NEW
version is scaled large enough that I can print sharp 16” X 20” prints from it, and
scanning the original at 800dpi or higher would only push that size even higher,
or increase the resolution of the larger print! The final full image is on the next
page.

Advanced Tip: Now, I want to give you one last trick for this type of image, and
this tip is a million-dollar idea. Print the resulting image on canvas using a large-
format printer. Once the print is finished, take some acrylics paints and generous
apply daubs or streaks to a few places on the canvas…I usually use a palette
knife rather than a brush because I can build up texture to the “painting.” By
doing this, even sparingly, you are adding perceived value to the print as an
“original” because you can’t apply those touches exactly the same every time.
Now if you’re thinking that your no artist…this is NOT hard to do. It’s pretty
simple actually, and the depth it adds to the final piece is well worth it. Of course,
if you only plan to offer the image digitally, then you will not want to use this
technique. But I encourage you to experiment with this idea. It can be a LOT of
fun!
Scaling Those Pesky Jaggies
If you have ever tried to enlarge a small JPEG image to a size larger than its
original then you’re probably familiar with compression artifacts, or “jaggies.”
They’re created in images when they are compressed to sizes smaller than the
original. The JPEG standard (the most familiar) specifies both the codec, which
defines how an image is compressed into a stream of bytes and decompressed
back into an image, and the file format used to contain that stream. The
compression method is usually lossy compression, meaning that some visual
quality is lost in the process and cannot be restored. In other words, once that
data is gone, it’s gone, with nothing but “jaggies” in its place. But all is not lost (no
pun intended). There are some clever tricks we can do in Photoshop to minimize
the jaggies and turn a
formerly unusable image
into one that actually works
very nicely. Here’s what I
do…

For our sample image, I

went to the New York
Public Library website and
found an image of old
wallpaper. I thought it
would make a good test
subject because of the level
of detail and variation. To
our left is the original image
I grabbed from the NYPL
website:
(http://www.nypl.org/digital).
So I decided to take this 6
X 9 inch, 72dpi image and
blow it up to 8 X 11 inches at 300dpi. That is a HUGE difference, and, as you can
imagine, the jaggies showed up in large numbers.

As you’ll see in the next image, the image did not enlarge well at all…and in all
honesty, I chose to use an extreme example of this process just to prove a point
on the possibilities. Here was the result of the image enlargement. I zoomed in
so that the image would display at 100%. The result is scary:
Now you might be thinking, “How in the world could I ever create something
usable from that mess?” Well…enter one of my favorite filters in Photoshop…the
“Dry Brush.” I use the Dry Brush for all types of effects, but this trick is my
favorite, and you’ll see why in a minute. When I open the Dry Brush (Filter =>
Artistic => Dry Brush…), I am given several options for adjusting the final
outcome of my image. The settings I typically use are the same ones I’ve used
for over 10 years because they work really well. But as I’ve stated previously,
you’re welcome to experiment! You’ll notice in the image on the next page that
my settings are as follows: Brush Size – 4; Brush Detail – 10. I never use
Texture. You can see the result of these settings in the image. Notice especially
the left flower in the image.
After applying the Dry Brush, I choose to enhance the Saturation as before.
Notice that I ONLY increase the saturation by +10. Much more than that and the
image will start to look funky.
After applying the Saturation, we have our end result. Here is an image that
shows BEFORE and AFTER the Dry Brush and Saturation effects. Our NEW
image is on the left and the original is on the right.

Now, while there IS some improvement to the new image, we can push this trick
one step further by adding another process BEFORE the Dry Brush. That new
process is the Smart Blur filter (Filter => Blur => Smart Blur…). Smart Blur is a
very cool little filter in Photoshop because it respects the hard edges in an image,
and at the same time, smoothes out the broad color areas. When I opened the
Smart Blur Dialog Box, the results were pretty interesting. Pay special attention
to the white areas of the image. Notice that all the artifacts are gone. Smart Blur
just smoothed them out. After we apply the Smart Blur, THEN we go back and
apply the Dry Brush filter to see if it makes any difference when compared to the
first “Dry Brush Only” image.
Here is a comparison image showing a zoomed-in section of the original
enlarged image, together with “Dry Brush Only” and the new version that adds
“Smart Blur to the mix:

I think the results speak for themselves, especially considering how much I
enlarged the original low-rez image. I have used this technique in all types of
commercial circumstances. One of the most notable (to me) was when I had to
produce a life-sized display image of Bishop T.D. Jakes, who was being featured
in Time Magazine. The original image I had to work with was 8 X 10 inches at
300dpi, but had to be enlarged to 60 inches in height. When I upsampled the
image (the technical term for the enlarging process), it didn’t look good and I
didn’t have an alternate image to use. It was during the creation of that display
that I first tested this process and it worked perfectly. When the display printed,
you could not tell that it had been upsampled at all. I’ve used the trick ever since,
and now you can too!
My goal for this ongoing Photoshop series is to fold: First, I want to help expand
your creative thinking…to get the ole’ creative juices flowing. Second, I want to
help you learn from my trial and error. Over the course of the past four editions of
Photoshop Tricks, you’ve learned in reading just 100 or so pages, what I learned
through years of experimenting and testing. That saves you time and effort, and
THAT’S why I’m writing these reports. I hope you enjoy them!
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