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Old August 5th, 2008, 05:01 PM   #24
SolarJM
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Due to the original forum I posted my tutorial closing down soon I have moved my step-by-step guide here.

Right ok...you might've seen some scans i've posted that I've altered in a way to merge pages and remove the seams. Here's how I do it with examples along the way.

1) Get yourself a copy of P*otoshop CS3 (If you google this with R****share at the end of it you'll find a couple of blogs or forums with RS links)

2) Install 'PS CS3' and then get your scanner ready.

3) Get a peice of dark paper to use and take the staples out of your magazine carefully (these can be replaced later) get your image that is printed over two pages with a seam in the middle and scan you image with the dark paper face down over the top of the page (this reduces lighter colours from the opposite side of the page showing through the scan) using an 'unsharp mask', 'no trimming', 'highest dpi' and 'at 7% scale'. Your scanner might use different terminology for these. Make sure the image is as straight as possible (if not, then preview the scan and check the alignment with marquee tool on the scanner option and see if the lines agree with the seam.)

4) Click scan and wait. (If you have an A4 scanner its best to scan a single page into two halves because some scanners and pages differ in size and this will give you the whole page in segments rather than a single page with an inch missing from the sides)

5) Open the images in PS and do the following goto Filter>noise>despeckle and despeckle the image. Then goto Image>image size and choose your resolution (I use 940 for height) keep all the boxes ticked and select from the menu 'Bicubic Sharper'. Then sharpen the image by going to Filter>sharpen>sharpen

Here's what you should have so far:


6) Now for the fun part. Open up PS and goto File>Automate>Photomerge. a window will popup with some options. Select 'Interactive Layout' and make sure 'Blend images together' is ticked. Click on browse and select both images of the same page like the ones I have done below. (Tip: Hold down CTRL and select both images you want merging) Then OK to them. Wait a moment while PS does it's merge. When its done, click ok to it.



After you've done that save the image and you'll have something like this:



Then do the same for the other page, and you'll end up with two complete pages ready for editing and further merging like so.



7) Crop the excess you dont want so you end up with your two images. Goto Photomerge again and select Interactive Layout but dont select Blend. when you've done that and OK'ed to it try and align the images as close and as accurate as possible ready for editing. Now were getting there. Thats the hardest part done. Here's what I have saved so far:



8) Now all we got to do is edit the images using a few tools in PS. The first is the clone stamp tool (from the menu on the left). Hold down alt to define a source point to clone and click on the area you want to change like so: (This tool is also great for getting rid of printing artifacts and tears, seams, etc) Tip: Use the slider underneath the mini window to zoom in + out.



9) Now with that done, we can clean up using the 'Healing brush Tool' (It's on the left hand side menu and looks like a plaster). And just use it to blend the stamped patterns you did earlier to correspond with the gradient of the surrounding colours.

10) Looking good now ...ok now do a final crop, and adjust the colours a bit using contrast and brightness. To do this goto Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast and then alter the colours to suit you need. Then save.......

Your all done. Here's the final product:



I know this might seem a bit long-winded but its not as bad as you might think when you do it a few times you get the hang of it. As you can see, the final result is a big difference to the picture and as perfect as you can get from a scanned magazine with two parts.

This is a good method for archiving your magazines. Also try and save your finished scan as a *.png format as this will keep most of the quality that *.jpg loses.

This was a quick tutorial. Any questions or suggestions let me know or pm me if you need help with a certain part.

Thanks
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