Scanning & transcibing WW1 diaries

[pressingon]

As the OH and me are the only members of our families to show any interest in family history we have recently been loaned 2X WW1 diaries belonging to OH distant cousin, these are family items.
They have been written in pencil and many pages are very faded. At the very least I want to scan them to preserve them before the deteriorate further.
Which is the best setting to scan them ie colour/greyscale what resolution etc? to try and make them more readable as I am the one retired it looks like the transcribing has fallen on me.
I have attached a page scanned in colour at 600 as an example
All help/advice appreciated
Regards
Pat

[bowman]

Pat,

 Having 'captured' your image, I opened it in Photoshop, discarded the colour and then altered the contrast, I think the attached image is a bit easier to read

Bowman

[pressingon]

Bowman
That is a definate improvement thank you.
I have only used photoshop for minor photo repairs etc, re this document how do you "discard the colour" ?
Regards
Pat

[bowman]

Pat
 I use photoshop 6, once you have opened the image, on the toolbar along the top, click on 'Image' and in the drop down menu click on the 'Mode' and in that drop down menu you will see the 'mode' that the image is in, with the 'tick' alongside, it should be on 'RGB color' in this instance, click on 'Grayscale' and the color can be discarded, and you can then go back to the image button on the toolbar, click on it and then on the adjust button to change Contrast/Brightness etc; if you are not happy with the result, click on the edit button and click on the 'Undo' option and any change will be undone, when you are happy save it, you cannot undo once you have saved it, so make a copy to work on.

Hope this helps
Bowman

[pressingon]

Hi Bowman
Many thanks that works fine 
Regards
Pat

[km1971]

Hi Pat

Although you are changing it to B&W it is always best to scan in colour, as more details is retained.

Ken

[km1971]

Hi Pat

Although you are changing it to B&W it is always best to scan in colour, as more detail is retained.

Ken

[sundial]

Am  very interested in this topic as I have some WW1 and WW11 diaries to scan. I was amazed at the clarity produced by the use of Photoshop to enhance the text, which I would never have thought of doing!

May I ask if the suggestion always to scan in colour rather than grayscale, applies equally to newsprint, and to photos originally in black and white or sepia?

And, like the original post, I struggle to decide what resolution to use for scanning, and whether to reduce the size (say to 25%) in order to reduce the potential file size, given the massive number of pages to be scanned.

Shall watch with interest!

Sundial

[bowman]

Whilst it might be OK to scan in colour in order to "retain detail", I doubt that these diaries were written on coloured paper but have discoloured over the years, I think that the idea of Pat's question was to enable him to READ the text, after all, if he still wants colour he still has the originals, as for Sundial's interest, I have found that the higher the resolution the less pixilation you get when manipulating them in any image program and it makes for easier printing, after which reduce them by all means. Any text or B&W photos seem to me to be best scanned in Grayscale.

Bowman