Merging Images in Photoshop, Part Two

While my first post in this series covered some basics of non-destructive image merging in Adobe Photoshop, this post aims to give you some tools to work with less ideal images.

A typical problem faced by many when attempting to merge images is how to deal with slight variations in your materials. These variations can be a result of the hardware you use (scanner or camera), lighting conditions, software, or a myriad other factors.

In this scenario I'll use an image from a scanned book that has a lighting problem. This is a very common difficulty when scanning books on a flatbed; the book's gutter will raise up from the scanner's surface, giving it a darker tone and distorting the content. Applying pressure to the book may work sometimes, but often we do not want to risk damaging our books (or, worst-case-scenario, our equipment) that way. Much safer to work digitally.

The first step is identifying the cutoff point where the gutter begins to negatively affect image quality. As you can see from this image. As always, make sure you've saved a master version before making any edits. 

Use the Rectangle Marquee tool to isolate the "safe zone" of the page, where the page's content is mostly unaffected by the gutter. Copy this selection and paste it into a new document with approximately the same dimensions as the original document. This is our new "base" document. I will usually put the word "EDIT" in its title somewhere so it won't be mistaken for the master.

In situations like this when we are dealing with an off-white paper, we'll want to make sure our background matches the paper's tone. Use the Eyedropper tool to select the page tone, and use the paint bucket to fill it in the background of the new base document.

What we are going to do next is create an amalgam of the image's two elements (page and background) to create a new version with improved legibility. To accomplish this we are going to use Photoshop's Layer Mask tool. Layer Mask is incredibly useful for photo editing, and best of all it is a non-destructive solution, meaning whatever you do with it can always be easily undone. The Layer Mask is very much what it sounds like: a layer placed on top of each image that can be "masked" or "unmasked," concealing or revealing the image's contents. Select the right side layer and click "Add Layer Mask" at the bottom of the Layer menu. You will now see a small white rectangle linked to that layer; that's your layer mask. The color white means "unmasked," so right now it's simply sitting on top of your original layer waiting for you to give it instructions.

Next, be sure you have the correct layer, AND your layer mask selected, or else you will alter the image itself. The Layer Mask functions in grayscale. Black is "masked," white is "unmasked," and grays are everything in between. Set your foreground color to black. Select the brush tool, and reduce the hardness to 0 (use whatever diameter you feel comfortable with). Check again to make sure you're still on your layer mask, and simply begin lightly touching up the problem spots along the gutter with your brush. Use single clicks rather than click-and-drag, that way you will make very minor adjustments while you get a feel for the technique.

As you can see, we've fixed the page to appear legible and flat. But be warned, this exact method won't work for every situation. If you have content that is deep in the book's gutters, you will likely have to accept a less-than-perfect image. However these techniques can still be used to improve the image quality in those situations, it is simply more difficult to get a "perfect" image. Vary your brush settings and color in the Layer Mask (experiment using a 50% grayscale) to find solutions that best suit your situation.

Written by Ryland Ianelli

Big Plans in Digital Production

Something exciting is brewing in the depths of Baker-Berry! 

New workstations, and mysterious boxes have been arriving steadily. 

Stay tuned for future updates from the Digital Production Unit!

Written by Ryland Ianelli

Manage Your Photos with Adobe's Bridge and Lightroom

If you decide to digitize a collection of images, such as a photo album or a slideshow, there are literally thousands of different software solutions to go about organizing them. Many of these can come bundled with scanning or photo software, and often those can offer a relatively low-cost and hassle-free solution to keeping track of your images.

However, if you want to ensure the maximum compatibility and usability of your images over the long term, there are more advanced options available through Adobe's very popular line of professional software. The complete Creative Suite (and the newly-offered Creative Cloud) feature an almost overwhelming amount of tools, from film editing to website design, along with the nigh-essential Photoshop.

Two of these programs are designed for the main purpose of organizing and viewing large collections of images; something you might imagine is essential to the kinds of digitization projects taken on by the Dartmouth College Library's Digital Production Unit. Adobe Bridge and Adobe Lightroom each offer distinct advantages over the other, and while they may share some purposes, it can save you a lot of time to know which one suits your project best.

Adobe Bridge is, as its name implies, an excellent way to organize many different kinds of media, "bridging" many formats. It is designed to play nicely with all other Adobe programs, and offers an excellent alternative to the standard Mac OS Finder, or Windows Explorer when it comes to browsing collections. The interface can be altered modularly to suit a project, meaning you can re-size, add or delete tools from the main screen with great ease. Additionally, you can add or alter image metadata, and do batch file renaming. Its flexibility is its best selling point, making it a helpful addition to any Adobe-based workflow.

Lightroom, on the other hand, is designed specifically for photographs. In addition to letting users browse through collections of photographs, Lightoom offers far more tools for photo-editing than Bridge, and presents them in a way that is familiar for professional or amateur photographers. While at first blush this would appear similar to running a combination of Bridge and Photoshop, it actually has a few interesting tricks of its own.

The most important thing about Lightroom is to think of it within the context of a photographer's studio. The program is designed to take raw camera files (.dng is the most common format) and apply various changes to it without altering the originals. The entire editing action takes place within the Lightroom environment, so you are never in danger of losing data. You can think of your raw camera files as digital negatives, to be used and reused to create different print files. Lightroom easily stores setting data, allowing you to export as many kinds of derivative files as are needed. However, it is designed around these features. If you want to make actual changes to a master document you'll have to use Photoshop.

Between these two programs we can respond to all kinds of challenges in the Digital Production Unit, organizing and reworking files in the manner best suited to the project.

Written by Ryland Ianelli 

Digital Production: Tools of the Trade

Today I'd like to highlight the Digital Production Unit, a cozy corner of Baker Library where we, along with the crucial help of many other library departments and staff, help to bring digital content to the Dartmouth community.

Baker 02: where the magic happens

Any good workshop needs the right tools for the job, and ours is no different. As I mentioned in my post about Optical Character Recognition, the Digital Production Unit deals with a very wide variety of library materials, from 18th century manuscripts to an audio lecture by J. Robert Oppenheimer and related materials. It is a simple fact that Dartmouth Library's Special Collections have a fantastic variety of useful scholarly objects, and it behooves us to be as versatile and efficient as possible in bringing these into digital space.

Scanning workstations

Our most commonly used pieces of equipment are our two flatbed scanners: the Epson Perfection V750-Pro and the Epson Expression 10000XL.

Epson Perfection V750-Pro

The Perfection V750 is an excellent consumer-level machine. It's small, relatively inexpensive, and perfectly able to create high quality images up to our standards. Most importantly, this scanner has a considerable speed advantage when compared to...

...the Epson Expression 10000XL

The Epson Expression XL is, first and foremost, a significant upgrade from the Perfection in terms of scanning area, which is over twice as large as the Perfection's. It is also a very versatile machine, with attachments for scanning photographic negatives in addition to the usual capabilities. In terms of scanning quality the two Epson scanners are roughly equal, however, due to the Expression's larger scan area, it has a significantly slower scanning speed, which can become problematic on time-sensitive items.

Kodak PS810

The other crucial piece of equipment in our lab is the Kodak Picture Saving Scanner System PS810. This scanner has a much more specific function than the Epsons. Its strength is speed; the feed tray can pull through and scan several photos per-minute, indeed, hundreds in a single operation. This is incredibly useful in dealing with our biggest project yet: the Dartmouth Photographic Files, an impressively large collection spanning back to the very beginnings of the College's photographic records.

While this scanner excels at scanning many documents quickly, it is even more limited in scanning area than the Epson Perfection. Not only that, but items must be under a certain thickness in order to pass through the feed safely. Additionally, it can only scan at 24-bit color (as opposed to the Epson scanners' 48-bit colors), which renders it ineligible for many projects. While these drawbacks make it somewhat limited in applications, it performs very well when properly maintained (our procedures have it cleaned daily, and sometimes more often than that).

In addition to the equipment in Baker 02, we also have been known to occasionally borrow other library resources in accomplishing our goals.

The Indus Color Book Scanner 5002

This overhead-style scanner is exceptional for scanning entire books, as its adjustable platform can accommodate different-sized spines. Another advantage is speed; this scanner works similar to a camera, snapping a single digital picture and transferring it to the computer. The biggest disadvantage is image quality; like the Kodak scanner, its limited to 24-bit color.

The Vidar HD4230

Finally, for oversize documents we've had occasion to coordinate with the Evans Map Room and make use of their feed-scanner, the Vidar HD4230. This scanner creates very high quality images by feeding larger documents through it, rather than passing lamps over stationary documents, like a flatbed scanner does. The speed of scanning is relatively slow, and must be done carefully to insure the document's safety. However, for many projects such as the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of New Hampshire, this scanner is the only option to ensure the quality of images over a certain size.

Using these tools, and with the invaluable support of many library staff, we've been able to adapt to the myriad challenges in Digital Production. Personally, I look forward to what further challenges await.
Written by Ryland Ianelli.

Optical Character Recognition: Digital Tools for a Digital Age

Each year the Dartmouth College Library, and indeed, libraries in general, expand further and further into digital territory. The ease with which the modern student can potentially access materials online is nothing short of astonishing, especially for those of us who remember the days of card catalogs and microfilm. As traditional publishers look to e-publishing and online journals so too does the Library, consistently finding new and better ways to provide our services to students and faculty.

When Dartmouth sets out to create a digital version of an item in our collection, there are many factors to consider. Is it visual material or textual? If it's a combination of both, which is more important and/or useful? How should it be displayed? How should it be cataloged?

One example of a digitized item that includes both visual and textual material.

These are all large questions, ones currently being figured out by libraries and repositories around the world. The Dartmouth College Library has recently created a Digital Production Unit under the Preservation Services Department to tackle these issues. While each project the Digital Production Unit takes on is unique in its requirements, each one also gives us new tools and skills to approach the next one.

One of the most important tools is Optical Character Recognition software (OCR), a program designed to "read" text from an image. This technology has been explored since the earlier parts of the 20th century, originally intended to assist blind readers without requiring a costly conversion to braille for each individual book. Early models proved too expensive for general use until 1965, when the American Postal Service began using it to great effect in mail sorting. As the technology advanced we began to see more and more applications for these machines, however, it still remained severely limited by the amount of hardware required.

Fast-forward forty years: the technology needed for image capture and storage is ubiquitous, even at the consumer level. Now we begin to see OCR technology made widely available, and with only a few basic pieces of equipment and software the Dartmouth College Library has been able to capitalize on this technology.

The first steps in any OCR project are image capture and processing. Using document scanners we are able to create digital versions of original materials. The exact process varies from project to project, but in the case of a project needing OCR we will generally apply image processing at this stage too; generally adjusting contrast and sharpening. What this will hopefully do is assist the OCR software in "reading" the text by improving its legibility.

A digitized book that has been run through OCR to create an HTML-based version for web viewing.

Next, the document is run through an OCR program. These programs come in many varieties and have become quite advanced over the years, however they are still not all-powerful. A huge variety of factors affect the document's legibility, such as the age and condition of the document and the overall quality of the type. While the OCR software has very advanced algorithms for sorting problematic or indistinct characters, for better quality control we also have the option to "teach" the program, transcribing the type manually whenever the program is unsure of its results. The OCR then incorporates this information into future readings.

This represents a collaboration between the great advantages of modern digital information and the inimitable visual character of the historical object. It is our hope to provide the Dartmouth community with the best of both worlds.

Written by Ryland Ianelli.

Winning the Game of Digital Curation

A few weeks ago, the Preservation Services team used one of our regular department meetings to play a board game. Yes, that's right...we played a board game at work! But lest you think we're just a bunch of slackers, let me assure you that this particular game was special, and highly relevant to our jobs. The game we played was Curate: The Digital Curator Game.

This game was created by Digital Curator Vocational Education Europe, or DigCurV for short. The game is designed to help people learn about and discuss the challenges and strategies involved in digital curation, while also having a lot of fun! It includes plenty of pertinent questions exploring issues such as staffing, funding, collaboration, and training.

The "game" part of the game is really just a ruse...a way to get people interested in having the digital curation discussion, and it worked. We all got really into it, and had a lively conversation. Some of the topics that we found especially useful were: project and workflow planning, skills needed for staff involved in curation, and listing external resources for gathering more information about digital curation.

The game is free to download from DigCurv, they just require you to register as a network member. Part of the game includes recording discussion points on a record sheet, and DigCurV’s only request is that anyone who plays the game submit these sheets anonymously, to help them better understand how the game is used and whether it’s helpful. It was definitely helpful for us, and we thank DigCurV for providing such an excellent resource for sharing and learning about digital curation!

Written by Helen Bailey.

The Right Tools for the Job

Like many conservators, tools interest me. They allow my hands to execute very specific actions in a more exacting fashion than they could alone. On the whole, a knife, for example, makes a cleaner cut than the tear made without one. A spatula lifts a thin piece of bookcloth with more accuracy than a fingernail. It’s valuable to keep in mind that occasionally to tear is the better action than to cut—sometimes speed beats accuracy or the feathered edge is more appropriate.

In my conservation work I use a fairly small selection of tools, only venturing outside this basic set when the repairs stray from the usual. My basic hand tools:

Pictured bottom row, left to right: staple remover, awl, microspatula, Casselli knife (larger), Caselli knife (smaller), scissors, bone folder, bone folder (smaller), Teflon folder, needle, tweezers, Olfa cutting knife, glue brush. Top row, left to right: weight, rubber cement pick-up (crepe eraser), and 45-degree right triangle. Not pictured: 12” and 18” rulers, large scissors.

Tools for cutting:

A small pair of scissors that cut all the way to the tip and a sharp, straight-bladed knife are both very useful tools. Sometimes you want a quick rough cut, and scissors are the perfect tool for the efficiency. Other times accurate cutting is essential, and a knife is the best option. Change the blade frequently, as a sharp blade is a safe one.

Tools for sewing:

A staple remover (top) can pry staples apart for removal without causing paper damage. A bookbinding needle, whose eye is no wider than the body of the needle, will allow tighter sewing since the hole the needle makes will not be larger than the needle’s thickness. (The needle size should be in harmony with the thread size.) The awl (bottom) has a shaft of equal width its entire length allowing for piercing holes of a consistent size.

Tools for lifting:

The Casselli #4 spatula (top) is my usual tool for lifting leather or paper when rebacking a book, and it can also be used for spine cleaning. The blade is very thin, as is the blade on the small Caselli #2 (3rd from top), which easily gets into very small spaces. The microspatula (2nd from top) has a thicker blade, but still allows for the insertion of glue or paste in small areas. The tweezers (bottom), with their fine, pointed tip, assist with positioning Japanese paper in repairs and removing excess cloth in corners when making boxes.

Recently, the blog of the Preservation Department at Parks Library of Iowa State University had a detailed post on microspatulas, including photos of them in action.

Tools for scoring, folding, and pressing:

My small Teflon folder (top) has two very useful ends: one pointed and one chiseled. Both ends of the tool allow tight adhesion of book cloth to board when making boxes, especially in the corners. The entire length can help secure a spine on a reback, and the Teflon material does not cause burnishing of the cloth or paper as bone folders can. My larger Teflon folder (not pictured) gets pulled out for larger projects. The two other folders are made of bone, with the middle folder’s blunt tip and wider body being useful for most work, and the lower folder helpful for smaller, more detailed work. The bottom folder’s tip broke some time ago, but a bit of sanding smoothed the rough bone with no detriment to its function. (A word of caution about sanding: Do not sand bone or Teflon without adequate health protection, as the dust can be harmful if inhaled.)

Tools for gluing, measuring, and stabilizing:

Much of the work I do requires applying glue or paste to small areas; hence the small sizes of my glue brush (top) and paste brush (bottom). Both have brush tips about 1/2-inch in width. For box-making or gluing up large areas of paper or cloth, I generally use a foam paint roller for application (not pictured). A small flat weight (a piece of steel covered with book cloth) holds work in place while sewing or drying. A rubber cement pick-up (also called a crepe eraser) will often get a stray bit of glue off of book cloth or paper. The small metal 45-degree right triangle is essential for box-making. It is also convenient for trimming small pieces of material on the bench, without requiring a walk to the board shear.

If tools interest you too, then you may wish to follow Jeff Peachey’s blog. He writes about tools, as well as makes and sells them.

Tools for bookbinding and conservation are available from a variety of vendors, including local hardware, craft, and stationary stores, as well as those businesses catering specifically to the conservation and binding fields. Additionally, the vendor room at the Guild of Book Workers Standards of Excellence Seminar each year provides a great opportunity to see a wide range of tools and supplies, and to support the vendors who keep the specialized items available to practitioners. The vendor room is open to all, not just conference attendees. A list of past vendors can be found on the Standards website. A list of supplies and services for bookbinding and conservation can be found here.

Written by Stephanie Wolff.