Folks
This is certainly unrelated to UMSF (and I assume therefore not best placed in the image processing sub forum) but on the other hand is something that the massive collective experience and prowess of this place should be able to provide pertinent thoughts on (indeed I'm kicking myself for not thinking of asking earlier, having spent so long marvelling at the images generated here).
Take the following image:
Click to view attachment
It's actually faint text, and in fact should read the football results thus:
Arsenal 0 Sunderland 0
Aston Villa 0 Chelsea 1
So my question would be what techniques might best be used to manipulate such an image to make it as legible as possible?
The limit of my Photoshop ability is a simple contrast enhancement, but presumably we could be much smarter than that?
Why? I hear you ask....well it harks back to work we published in Chemical Communications last December where we showed that polymerisation of disulfur dinitride is stimulated by inkjet traces. Thus minute amounts of the latter prompt the formation of the dark polymer (SN)x; minute amounts such as the residue on the inside of an envelope which has contained an inkjet printed page. Thus in the above case the results from one saturday were printed out, placed in an envelope and then sent to ourselves. Upon opening the envelope and discarding the printed page, the inside of the envelope was exposed, part of which gave the image shown (which I have reversed from the actual mirror image generated).
This is one of the poorer examples, but I guess that makes it even more useful to work on.
Any thoughts welcome!
Thanks
PFK
PS What's even spookier is when you can image the contents of the envelope without opening it thanks to the even more minute amounts of inkjet diffusing right through - but that's another story