Handpicked Software

My wife had to copy a receipt the other day to submit expenses, but the original was so faded that when I scanned it the text was barely readable. Naturally, I fired up my EPSON Scan utility, switched to Professional Mode and fiddled with the settings. After a couple of additional scans, I had an almost readable copy. Not to worry: open the scan in Photoshop, tweak levels, etc., and it’s perfect. What I didn’t know was that I could have solved the problem by correcting the first scan in Preview. Here’s how:

1. Open your scan in Preview.
2. My Epson scans to a PDF file. If you’re starting with a PDF file, you’ll first need to convert the file to another format. Select Save As… from the File menu, or press Shift-Command-S. Select another format from the pop-up menu (Photoshop is a good choice, especially if you think you might want to do more advanced editing later) and click Save. The original window is replaced with the converted file. Note that this is also a great way to enhance faxes, which are usually TIFF files; these won’t need to be converted before you can correct them.
3. Now that you have a workable image, select Image Correction from the Tools menu, or press Option-Command-C. The Image Correction palette appears.
4. To adjust a faded text file, try moving the Contrast slider to the right and the Brightness slider slightly to the left. You can also experiment with the Exposure and Gamma controls.
5. To clean up a fax, try sliding the Contrast slider to the right.
6. Your changes aren’t saved until you close and save the file. If you close the Image Correction palette and decide you don’t like your changes, just open it again and click the Reset All button.

Image Correction inside Preview makes it handy for correcting faded scans and noisy faxes. Save yourself some time and use it instead of rescanning or launching Photoshop the next time you need to correct an image.