Edge Detection of rough scan

[Futuremoose]

Hi, I am a new Affinity user. 

 

I was hoping for some suggestions to help with this problem... I scanned an old document that has some patterns (sort of blue-green or teal design against age-yellowed paper). I am trying to capture the design to use in another project, but the original image is so aged and rough it is proving difficult (in fact, the original print was probably of poor quality, even when new).

 

I have attached a "before/after" image of what I would like to achieve. As you can see, the one branch is a solid color with sharp edges. This was done by hand.

 

I have read the "edge detection" section in the manual, and the few forum topics I thought pertinent, but came up short. Any ideas on how I can make this process any easier?

 

Thanks... Futuremoose

 

[gdenby]

Hi, Futuremoose,

In a way, there are no edges. The original pigment has pooled in the paper streaks, seeped/blurred into the paper, and probably faded a lot.  I tried all sorts of stuff to remove the noise, different ways of making selections and then trying to blur that into something solid. After an hour, I really had nothing much more useful. Got farther with hand work in less than 10 minutes than with what I could get from filters, adjustments, etc.

 

 

 

 

[R C-R]

I was reasonably successful in removing the noise in the paper by experimenting with the Frequency Separation filter & working with only the low frequency layer, but even after trying all the sharpening filters & such, what was left was too blurry & edgeless to be of much use, other than as a very rough guide for hand painting with a brush or manual tracing with the vector tools.

[MEB]

Hi Futuremoose,

Welcome to Affinity Forums

The original image doesn't have enough detail and contour to be of much use even with post processing, specially if you want to get clean edges as in the part you have created. I don't know if we are seeing just part of the image or the whole things but i would simply draw it manually using the Pen Tool - make use of Pressure profiles (see the stroke width pop-up - Pressure button on bottom right) to get the stroke width variation shown in the image. You can then convert the strokes to shapes if you want going to menu Layer ▸ Expand Stroke. Some smart shapes may also be useful to quickly build some of the details.