photoshopping

Found the "selective gaussian blur" is a bit better as it allows choosing a delta threshold...

Ok...

Ok..

They dont.

That is a pain. The quickest way to do *most* of what you want is to adjust the gamma curve.

I think you have covered most. What I have done when cleaning up old plans and blueprints is to uses several passes, and use the eraser. And a paint tool to spot in missing pixels. On many old plans I have resorted to redrawing parts of them.

Is it too much to suggest retyping the document? If you use a page layout application like Scribus, you can pretty much retype over the original, imported as a background image and get everything spot on placement wise. DTP programs allow micro spacing and aspect ratio adjustment of fonts.

Either the work is worth doing properly, or it ain't. Your call.

So you want the look not just the contents then? Some modern OCRs can cope with quite a lot of badly photocopied stuff, but some editing will always be needed for older fonts. Brian

Solarisation filter can sometimes help.

Scanning through a sheet of sheet of slightly obscure plastic like a ring binder A4 pocket, can create a scan that is better suited to post processing (it tends to integrate the dot pattern into a more solid grey scale).

If it is a text document, then sometimes just trying to OCR it can work.

It's a blank form which I need to fill in, it can only be submitted on paper, so I want to scan it in, clean up the crappy background, overlay my entries as text boxes rather than handwritten, then print it out.

The last one of these I sent got "lost in the system" so I will hand-deliver it.

I don't doubt you've looked for the form online but FWLIW I'd be happy to have a quick second go. My reply to address is still valid.

It's a form "Cap A5C", both HMRC and HMCTS say it's not available electronically, there's a helpline number to call to request one in the post, and that's where I got the ropey copy from, it hasn't been revised in at least 23 years, as all the date fields are helpfully pre-filled with 1 9 _ _

The other place I've seen it offered (but not to the likes of me) is as a LexisNexis SmartForm.

Oh, and a few years back, someone on a forum was offering a copy, probably the same version I have.

But this morning's editing has resulted in a clean copy.

I'm a bit surprised HMRC still don't make that form available online. I no longer know people in the IHT/probate service and can't guess what they fear.

Good. But unless things have changed it would have been fine for you to use a scan with all the flaws. Clear, printed entries would win you the brownie points.

There's images of the form here;

Click on them and then save as..

Thanks, it's the correct form, but it's only a 100dpi preview, my tidied up version will be better ...