Reading images defaced by enumerator

[PeteW1959]

By accident I have discovered a way of making images clearer that have enumerator's marks across them, especially across ages.

Download and save the file, then open it up in a picture editor (The Gimp and Irfanview are free). Use the editor's 'Image Invert' option to turn it into a negative. The Enumerator's marks appear much fainter and the age can then be read more easily.

[vikki brace]

Thanks for that suggestion - I seem to be having that exact problem. Off to try it out

Thanks

[Dugless]

Great tip! Just tried it, and yes, it does work. I now know that my gg-grandfather employed 90 people in his mill in 1861. Couldn't read it before. Now where did he bury his fortune...?

[Dugless]

It occurs to me that some readers may not know how to get an Adobe/PDF image into a picture editor. Here’s how…

Open the Adobe/PDF file and, using the zoom control, enlarge it so that the required part of the image almost fills the screen. Now press the ‘Print Screen’ key which will put a copy of the screen on the clipboard. Open your image editor, I use Paintshop Pro but most others work the same way, go to ‘Edit’ on the menu bar and down to ‘Paste…’. Select the ‘Paste as new image’ option and, bingo, there’s your image. You can then convert it to greyscale if necessary and invert it or turn it into a negative version.

Once you have done it successfully it becomes easier to work on further images.