Enhancing Scan of Faded Handwritten Notes

[GrottyBananas]

Dear Forum,

I recently received documentation that contained three sheets of handwritten medical notes. Unfortunatley the handwriting is extremely faded (and very poor).

I had the pages scanned at a local printers (pdf at the time. I am not sure if that is any good, but that is what I have to work with) and he suggested due to the quality of the scanned images (even though they are extremely close to the original papers) that I use PS Elements to create a brightness/contrast layer, which I duly did. This has helped bring out the notes (that is to say the faded scribbles now contrast much better with the white page (speckled) background), but the handwriting is so poor that I can barely make out words, let alone sentences.

However, by enlarging the images up to 66+% (in order to try and make sense of these scribbles word by word) the handwriting becomes grainy (please excuse the lack of PS imagery related vocabulary), which now renders the task of translating virtually impossible. (The catch 22 is that I need the higher magnification to attempt to make sense of each word.)

So in light of the above, is there a way of cleaning up or restoring (I am not asking for miracles) such scans maybe by sharpening or smoothing the pen lines or getting rid of artefacts that would help in this task?

I tried inverting the image, but I am clumsy in my use of PS Elements, so this really did not help. And by simply duplicating the brightness/contrast layer, while effective in creating greater contrast also causes greater grain at the higher magnification.

I seem to remember a trick to smooth skin tones, which I will look for in the vain hope that the principle will be the same no matter what the content of the image is, but while I look into that if anyone has had experince with enhancing faded handwriting, or indeed has any ideas that I could try, would you be kind enough to let me know; you would be a great help.

[Mark_Sand]

It would help if you upload the scans to this forum (click on the camera icon) or to the free service http://pixentral.com

[GrottyBananas]

Dear Mark,

Thank you for your reply, please find attached a sample of the pages aforementioned.

(Noting the size restrictions of the Insert Image tool, I have zoomed the original to 100% then used the crop tool to select a protion of the scan 449 px by 599 px, this version of the file is saved in PNG format as the forum would not allow the PSD file. I am not sure if this information is at all useful, but there it is.)

[Mark_Sand]

A Levels adjustment should give better results than a Brightness/Contrast adjustment for darkening the writing while leaving the backgrund white.

Here I moved the left sider to the right. Also try the middle slider or a combination of both This revealed some scattered dots which can be removed by Cloning adjacent area or painting over them.

A Threshold adjustment will give similar results.

[GrottyBananas]

Thanks for your help.

[hatstead]

Go to Filter>Brush Strokes>Accented Edges. Used Edge width=3,Edge Brightness=1, Smoothness=2

[GrottyBananas]

Great suggestions, they are extremely helpful. Many thanks.