Notary Public seal -- visibility/contrast

[afdojo]

I have a Power of Attorney document (from my sister) that was notarized in 2003 using the old "embossed" seal. In a scan or photograph, the seal is barely visible. I've side-lighted it with limited success (see attached jpg). Some of the companies (banks,  credit cards, etc.) have accepted the scanned version but some have not. I've played around with levels, curves, constrast and shadows/highlights but anything that improves the readability of the seal makes the whole document medium gray. Any suggestions on how to photograph or post-process with Affinity Photo would be most appreciated.

Thanks,

Doug

p.s. I'm sure someone has answered a similar question before but my simple searches didn't find anything. Sorry if this is a duplicate.

 

[Ldina]

@afdojo I'm not sure this will work for you needs or not. 

I started with a directional lighting filter to force the paper more white and highlight the lighter edges of the seal. I followed with a fairly extreme Levels adjustment, but noise was a problem so I added a noise reduction layer to eliminate most of it. AfPhoto and JPG versions are attached. 

 

 

 

NotarySeal2.afphoto

[afdojo]

Wow, much better than anything I tried. Thanks so much for your help!!

[NotMyFault]

1. tone map persona
2. global 0%
3. local contrast to 25%
4. apply
5. noise reduction
6. 85%
7. adjust detail to taste

Numbers are „starting points“, adjust all to taste

 

[Ldina]

18 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

1. tone map persona

Thanks for the reminder...for some reason, I always forget about using the Tone Mapping Persona and it's usually so good for dealing with this sort of thing!! 👍

[smadell]

Duplicate the layer (or just the seal) and set the blend mode to Linear Light.

[NotMyFault]

You can combine all the methods. Start with tone map, add a HF filter with blend mode linear light. All this boosts local contrast