How to Clean Up a Scanned Document

[@IdahoSAM.]

My wife and I do a lot of family history work, finding documents, etc that often have similar appearances. Some we may not care about, but others we would like a better copy. Your video really explains a process to do so. That is for posting this great tip.

[@KaptainCanuck]

Before masking, make the document a smart object. Start by making an exact copy and apply the overlay to the copy. That will remove almost all of the undesirable centre content that is less than 50% grey. Then clean the rest.

[@scrimperuk]

Thanks for this, I have only just purchased Affinity photo and trying to switch from PS CS5. I have often wondered how to remove that greying when scanning from books etc. Your solution is very clever, if I spent 20 years trying I would never have come up with this solution. You have gained another subscriber.

[@FulcrumUK]

I managed to something similar using levels, threshold and then erase paper white. Followed by a white pixel layer underneath. Then used one of the distort tools to get rid of the gutter fade off. It was a graphic with relatively few words so the distortion had to go. I'll try your method on the same image and see how it compares.

[@Alan-ox2hp]

cheers the technique is great, just make changes for individual documents...

[@7u5ay]

Great vid, would be very great if you do further tutorials regarding post processing scanned documents

[@pingu99991]

Is there a way to apply all these steps to a batch of images at the same time? currently making a recreation of my Great Great Grandad's war diaries from scans and it's pretty time consuming doing a page at a time.

[@inaffinityforaffinityphoto3220]

If you create a macro, you can use File/New Batch Job to apply the macro to all files you select there.

[@TheYesnoyesnoyesno]

Nice idea, unfortunately you do lose a lot of text... third line down on the left clearly ends 'contacting a support' but you lose that when the edge detect kicks in. It needs some pre-edge detect magic.

[@inaffinityforaffinityphoto3220]

It will certainly depend on the text. Being careful, you can balance the controls used in creating the mask for optimal effect. You can then paint white/black on the mask for for finer control.

[@anupamphukan5768]

Thank you sir this video is very usefull to me

[@Teddykhil]

HOw to bloody hell can I scan a document/photo and then open it up in Affinity Photo?

[@inaffinityforaffinityphoto3220]

Scanning is not built into Affinity Photo. Use the scan program that is available on the computer you use. On Windows 10+, just type 'scan' into the home screen search box. Use the program it finds to scan the photo, noting where it is saved. Often it will scan to jpg but you may be able to scan it to non-destructive form such as tiff. If you are not sure where the scanned document has gone, try Documents/Scanned Documents. Then either navigate there with Affinity Photo 'Open Document' or move the scanned document file to wherever you like first.

[@pedropuckerstein4670]

Very clever.

[@gregoryjamesboyce]

Sweet!

[@georginaceri]

Wow

[@deborahdunlap7168]

God this is annoying! I can do it instantly with the Lens app on my iphone. Adobe should offer a document cleanup lens in Acrobat! Without having to go to Photoshop which no longer works on my machine even though I'm paying for Creative Cloud!! This is such a universally needed capability! And Microsoft cancelled Lens for Windows. If there is any way to do this quickly, it sure isn't coming up on Google. I don't want to have to creat multiple layers! For each scan?! This isn't the 90s!

[@j.503]

Adobe Scan nicely cleans up documents automatically.