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I am a very amateur bookbinder and I am putting together a book of spells.  I have the copies of all the printed pages, however, the copy of the book is so old that the paper has browned.  I now wish to print the pages out, but on pre-made brown paper to save wasting so much ink on every page being printed brown.  I will get the same effect of a browned old book, but my own way.  My question is, how can I make the background of each page white, but make the actual writing brown?  I have tried many ways, but I just cannot get it right.  I have attached a couple of images of pages as examples of what I have.

Any help would be most appreciated.

7.jpg

4.jpg

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Or like this?

Edited.png.dfa0d8f8bb5df4803b069931cc014598.png

I first used levels and then curves to increase the contrast between the dark brown and light brown. I then merged visible. I placed a white fill layer below the top pixel layer and used the Flood Select Tool to select and delete the light brownish areas leaving them transparent. Keeping the main image with transparent for the background allows you to print on brown paper.

PS: It would help if you changed your post title to something more meaningful.

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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Just out of the top of my head. Can't you make the background white and then use the "opacity" to reduce the white? The text you can use brown for. By changing the opacity, you are also reducing the needed ink.

 

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You're not going to remove everything and really that would detract from the authenticity but applying a black and white filter can get you some way there. Moving the yellow slider will brighten the image but it will also lose you detail. 

Screen-Shot-2019-07-28-at-12-57-21.png

 

After the above you could do a Merge visible and apply the Erase White paper filter to get this...

Screen-Shot-2019-07-28-at-13-05-37.png

Bear in mind that the Erase White Paper filter (EWP) is a destructive filter, so once applied the only way back is undo, if you save the document and then close it after applying the EWP filter you cannot undo it. 

If you want a browny tinge you could nest the original image under the pixel layer...
Screen-Shot-2019-07-28-at-13-11-29.png

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Here's my try:

Duplicated the background twice. Hid the background.

On one, selected tonal range/shadows and feathered 2 px. Inverted then used B&W adjustment layer.

Repeated w 2nd dupe, but selected mid-tones. 

Merged those 2, and used the filter, Colors/erase white paper. Unchecked Document/transparent background.

LeaveBrown.thumb.jpg.6b237c43a504e72c29b9122674374751.jpg

Couldn't find a way to make the "white" any whiter w/o loosing brown.:(

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4 minutes ago, summersara said:

Lols, Well wonder if the spell worked? Library seeks Witches to translate 17th century spellbook

I don’t think they had spell checkers in the 17th century.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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You will still need to delete the image background colour for the brown paper to show through. I took your image and applied Levels and Curves, and then removed as much background colour as I could using Flood Select and Delete. The first image here is that version. (You may do better in erasing the background using the techniques by some of the clever clogs above @gdenbyand @firstdefence.)  I then added a fill layer below with a pale blue to show what printing on pale blue paper would look like. If you generate a fill layer with a pale brown that emulates your brown paper, then you will get an idea as to how it would look when printed. Ideally you could find a pale brown paper/fill colour that matched the residual pale brown in your image. You would obviously turn off the brown fill layer before you printed. The first image below has a transparent background, the second has a pale blue background.

Edited2.png.797786a722ea634dcd1aa57cfe8b41b8.png Edited3.png.dcf191fa53b0db837218cec66f173310.png

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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I all likelihood the inks would have been much darker and would probably have looked a black. The process of making the ink is probably what gives it a brownish tinge as it fades: http://web.ceu.hu/medstud/manual/MMM/ink.html

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
B| (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum)

Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

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  • 7 months later...

first defence,  I bought Designer and Affinity Photo mostly to do this exact thing, and I've spent on and off three years of frustration failing to do something you make seem simplicity itself. I can do the first part, applying the B&W filter, but after looking in the online help , the forum and the manual I can't find any info or tutorial on how to "merge visible" or "Erase White Paper".  If you or someone else could spare a couple of minutes to explain in words of one syllable, I'd be grateful.  My level of incompetence with Designer is pretty much total - eg although I can follow the online guide to set up the parameters for the dodge/burn brushes, I've never managed to make a marks with them

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You can get something fairly decent by only using some Adjustments (available in all the Affinity applications).
Watch the attached video and look at the settings I’ve used.
Once you have the adjustments added you can tweak them as per requirements.
It will probably be difficult to get something perfect without some manual work – and the best workflow would very much depend on the specific image – but if you want something quick then this should be fine. At the very least, it’s something to play around with and see what happens.

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I've just had another thought, which may be a much quicker method. Simply click on the cog in the layers panel (Blend Ranges) and in the Source Layer Ranges box drag the right hand node right down to the bottom. That seems to do a fairly decent job by itself.
 

You might also find that moving the left node across to the middle of the top gives a stronger contrast and leaves more ink showing. You can also turn off the linear tickbox and drag another point between the other two to get a curve that will give you a lot more control.

 

image.png.377b15c0c4c4fb14bab7acbbd536699d.png

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Thanks Lagarto; but no, that isn't my issue (the drawings in the thread aren't mine, it was just that @firstdefence posted in reply to the original poster something that was relevant to my problem).  I repair books.  Sometimes I need to replace a torn piece of text from a photo/photocopy/scan of a replacement page, then print it on a piece of paper similar to that of the original.  So I need an image of the text with the "white paper" erased.  Making small adjustments to the images of the text when the new page isn't identical to the old - slightly different print size, say - is the next problem I need to solve.  But all this is probably more information than you need or want.

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1 hour ago, GarryP said:

You can get something fairly decent by only using some Adjustments (available in all the Affinity applications).
Watch the attached video and look at the settings I’ve used.
Once you have the adjustments added you can tweak them as per requirements.
It will probably be difficult to get something perfect without some manual work – and the best workflow would very much depend on the specific image – but if you want something quick then this should be fine. At the very least, it’s something to play around with and see what happens.

Thanks Garry.  That's very useful.  I looked for ages for a demo clip like this.  If you don't have much familiarity with Affinity or other graphic design programs (like me) you need demos of the simplest, most obvious things.  The Affinity tutorials make me feel like an eight year old in a university seminar. Thanks again.

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On 3/19/2020 at 2:44 PM, Dazzler said:

I've just had another thought, which may be a much quicker method. Simply click on the cog in the layers panel (Blend Ranges) and in the Source Layer Ranges box drag the right hand node right down to the bottom. That seems to do a fairly decent job by itself.
 

You might also find that moving the left node across to the middle of the top gives a stronger contrast and leaves more ink showing. You can also turn off the linear tickbox and drag another point between the other two to get a curve that will give you a lot more control.

 

image.png.377b15c0c4c4fb14bab7acbbd536699d.png

Thanks, Dazzler

 

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