Butcher's shop in Brighton, mid twenties, Can anything be done?

[Roy G]

Charles W:  Great enhancement of the picture Charles.  Any idea what was written ON the window or if there was anything on the narrow fascia board above "Legs of Pork 1/3 per lb?"
Roy G

[Wiggy]

something ENGLISH BEEF & MUTTON I  think - i.e. written above the 'Legs of Pork' - cant' quite make out the first bit.

Wiggy   

[Roy G]

Thanks for that Wiggy, your much sharper eyesight has certainly helped me decipher it.  All I could see initially was the 'TON' ending, and my brain was trying to input 'BRIGHTON' rather than 'Mutton' into that position.
Although I still cannot read the first word, now I know the rest of the text and given the limited space available, I would opt for "BEST or FRESH."
Roy G

[geebrooks9]

Hi Dai_B, thank you very much, don't know how you managed it, but it's great.
I am adding a rescanned copy, hope it's better, but neither my sister or myself are sure of what to do to get a better image.
Best wishes, Sara.

[geebrooks9]

Hi, sorry all I think thats even worse, Sara.

[Ray T]

I think the sign beneath the window reads "English" ? "Beef and Mutton" - logically, "?" should be "Pork".

The scan posted is so heavily compressed that JPEG artifacts (i.e. the feathery bits that aren't on the original print) are obscuring the detail. In terms of scanning, ideally, as people have suggested, you need a resolution of around 300 dpi but you also need to use either a lossless file format (e.g. TIFF) or the minimum amount of compression (JPEG) you can get away with. The limiting factor is usually the rules of the bulletin board. I don't know what this is as I'm a relatively new member but I  assume the moderators limit the size of attachments. The other problem to watch out for is starting with a JPEG modifying it and saving it as another JPEG. Any artifacts on the original scan will receive artifacts of their own. Its a bit like Chinese whispers, do it too often and you end up with mush.  

If you can post a scan of just that bit of the photo with less compression, I'll have another go at reading it.
Ray

[Ray T]

Hi Sara
Crossed posts!

You need to study your scanner software. Don't go for the "easy option" which is included with most scanners, look for the "professional" version. (i) always scan in colour (ii) set the scanning resolution to 300 dpi (sometimes called ppi) (iii) crop what you scan to just the bit you want - I think your second scan scanned a small photo at A4 (iv) save the file as a TIFF or a JPEG - but set any compression to its minimum (v) pray that the file isn't too big to go on the board!

Ray

[geebrooks9]

Hi everyone, hope this is better, have tried to follow instructions, for which I am very grateful.
Best wishes, Sara.

[Ray T]

OK, we're getting there but we're not quite there yet. Hope I don't end up writing an essay!

i) you appear to have scanned the photo in "greyscale" (commonly/incorrectly known as black and white) rather than colour (probably called RGB in your scanner software - stands for Red/Green/Blue the three primary colours) - you can do more with a colour image than a greyscale one. 

ii) The scan is overall too light. Its not as possible to rescue a light image as a dark one. Somewhere in your scanner software should be a histogram control (often called "Levels") which produces a graph of all the different tones you are looking at. Ideally, the graph should be gently humped in the middle and possibly skewed to the left (where the dark tones are) yours will be skewed to the right where all the light tones are.

Look carefully at your picture in the darkest and lightest areas there needs to be detail in both. A lack of detail in the dark areas can usually be rescued to a point but if you have a lack of detail in the lightest (look at the board below the window) there is no information to rescue.

If you can find the levels control, have a play with it after you've done a preview scan. There is plenty of information on th'interweb. Try searching for "Photoshop levels" - where levels more or less started and most other software copied