Affinity Photo fixing bad quality document photo with phone shadow for printing.

[impact]

Hello, is this possible to fix this photos with Affinity Photo to be easier for reading and printing ( especially that ). Main goals:

• Make background paper white
• Make text contrast
• Remove shadow - all background to be close to white or white.

I know that sample resolution is very low which complicates this task.

Thanks for help

[Alfred]

The images are not only low resolution but also very blurred, and the time taken to remove the shadow, increase the contrast and sharpen everything up would be better spent retyping the text. Even on the second page there isn’t a large amount of text, but I don’t know how easy it would be to find suitable replacements for the Wawel Dragon and other pictures.

[RichardMH]

The shadows are bluish so you can use that to create a mask. Then curves to lighten and maybe change to B&W after. A bit fiddly.

[impact]

I finally managed to do it myself, here is what I did:

1. Filters > Frequency Separation... and I choose value which make shadow invisible and text possibly sharp and clear
2. Delete Low Frequency layer
3. Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels and move both White and Black closer to "peak" to make background much more white and text more black
4. Document > Flatten
5. Flood Select Tool with value 4% and I clicked on "gray background" then Delete
6. Erase Brush Tool to remove rest of artifacts and dust
7. Finally again a little Levels or Brightness/Contrast to make text slightly darker

Here is what it looks like.

Maybe someone has another idea how to reach this goal?

[NotMyFault]

14 hours ago, impact said:

• Make background paper white
• Make text contrast
• Remove shadow - all background to be close to white or white.

The next time scanning such documents with a smartphone you could use Apps like google PhotoScan or Dropbox which are great to remove such issues during capture.

[henryg]

4 hours ago, impact said:

I finally managed to do it myself...

Good job! Maybe try flash next time?

[impact]

11 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

The next time scanning such documents with a smartphone you could use Apps like google PhotoScan or Dropbox which are great to remove such issues during capture.

Thanks for good advise hahaha  sure I know Microsoft Lens and Adobe Scan which are very good I also own normal flat scanner but this files are not mine. Question was what to do with that bad source image.

[impact]

7 hours ago, henryg said:

Good job! Maybe try flash next time?

Sure it was not mine, normally I use good flashlight which is better than flash and special apps like I mentioned in last post. I had only problem what to do with that garbage which is already done anyway Affinity Photo again proved that it's gread tool.