Would Affinity Designer or Affinity Photo Be of Help Here?

[Gabe]

Your image is in a pretty "bad" shape at 100% zoom. You can see the grain of the paper and I don't believe there's much you can do about this. 

[gdenby]

Hi, American,

I don't do much more than dabble w. Photo, but attached is what I was able to do. Sadly, I forgot to save with history, so here's what I remember.

Crop and rotate. Use invert adjustment. Select the pixel layer, and apply frequency separation. I used a small percent change on the low pass side. Tossed the high pass that had all the little squares. Did an extreme luminance denoise. Played w. shadows and highlight setting, but decided it wasn't warranted. Used the clarity sharpening filter.

[GDPR-354025]

Oh dear Lord, is that great. Affinity will not let me "Like" this! (A pop-up says "You can't give out more Likes today," when I haven't been near this forum in nearly 18 hours.)

What you did is so very helpful to me; the faces are discernible and the text clearer. I also tried using High Pass yesterday but found that it had little effect on clarifying the typeface, which becomes blurred at the point where clearly legible typeface is important for my project.

How can I download what you have done? A cut-and-paste would lose some of the sharpness, I suspect.

Thank you!

EDIT: I can't cut-and-paste the entire file. I just see the photos.

[gdenby]

I only worked on the image.

I haven't looked much at the articles text. I've had some success, but have had to use a much different approach. Attached is a sample. I think the text and photo areas might need to be reworked as selected areas, so the  grey scale image are and the nominally black and white text each have appropriate treatments.

On my Mac, if I'm logged into the board, and click on the image, when it opens in its own frame, I can just drag it to my desktop. 

[GDPR-354025]

14 hours ago, GabrielM said:

Your image is in a pretty "bad" shape at 100% zoom. You can see the grain of the paper and I don't believe there's much you can do about this. 

I've worked for two-and-a-half hours trying to address this. There is only so much that can be accomplished with Levels (Levels have helped more than any other tool in sharpening the typeface.) Does Affinity have any tutorials about restoring old photographs?

Thank you.

[GDPR-354025]

8 hours ago, gdenby said:

I only worked on the image.

I haven't looked much at the articles text. I've had some success, but have had to use a much different approach. Attached is a sample. I think the text and photo areas might need to be reworked as selected areas, so the  grey scale image are and the nominally black and white text each have appropriate treatments.

On my Mac, if I'm logged into the board, and click on the image, when it opens in its own frame, I can just drag it to my desktop. 

Your result is beautiful and sharp. Unfortunately, without any indication of how you achieved it, I won't be able to try to get the same results. 

[Gabe]

9 minutes ago, American said:

I've worked for two-and-a-half hours trying to address this. There is only so much that can be accomplished with Levels (Levels have helped more than any other tool in sharpening the typeface.) Does Affinity have any tutorials about restoring old photographs?

Thank you.

I'm afraid no. We do not have any restoration tutorials

[GDPR-354025]

8 hours ago, GabrielM said:

I'm afraid no. We do not have any restoration tutorials

Thank you. 

[GDPR-354025]

8 hours ago, GabrielM said:

I'm afraid no. We do not have any restoration tutorials

Thank you. 

EDIT: If anyone would be kind enough to tell me how the above member achieved the clear white background with black text, I'd be grateful. Thank you.

[Gabe]

2 hours ago, gdenby said:

Hi, American,

I don't do much more than dabble w. Photo, but attached is what I was able to do. Sadly, I forgot to save with history, so here's what I remember.

Crop and rotate. Use invert adjustment. Select the pixel layer, and apply frequency separation. I used a small percent change on the low pass side. Tossed the high pass that had all the little squares. Did an extreme luminance denoise. Played w. shadows and highlight setting, but decided it wasn't warranted. Used the clarity sharpening filter.

 

[GDPR-354025]

@GabrielM I'm not certain what is meant by the repost of the user's earlier post (not ungrateful at all, just a bit confused).

I was referring to his/her posting a perfect sample of the "whitened" text I need but refraining to provide help on how I might replicate his/her results.

Thank you for being considerate.

[Gabe]

 

I thought you overlooked his reply. That "white" text can be achieved by pushing the white point to the left when using levels. 

[firstdefence]

On 9/18/2018 at 5:00 PM, American said:

Here is a screenshot of what I get. THANK you for letting me know this menu option even exists. I have attained Affinity entropy and need resuscitation.

You can literally drag and drop a PDF file into the workspace area and it will load, it will come up with this dialogue...

[GDPR-354025]

3 hours ago, GabrielM said:

 

I thought you overlooked his reply. That "white" text can be achieved by pushing the white point to the left when using levels. 

My mistake. I meant white background (as opposed to the black foreground, when dealing with scanned B&W text). John Rostron gave a world-class tutorial yesterday that I will be utilizing soon, it still being early morning here.

[GDPR-354025]

2 hours ago, firstdefence said:

You can literally drag and drop a PDF file into the workspace area and it will load, it will come up with this dialogue...
 

Whoa! I didn’t know this. Thank you!