Gobbledygook

[Currie]

Hello Sandy,

The photobucket image is 614 x 1024 pixels which isn’t suitable for the purpose. The long side appears to be the maximum photobucket will display. As long as SP has supplied sufficient pixels you can get more relevant pixels from photobucket by cropping the relevant parts of the images to blocks of say paragraph size, maybe leaving off most of the name area on the left, and posting those. Alternatively you could try the TS gallery to see if that will deliver the full resolution SP image.

When you zoom in on an image either of two things will happen 1. the pixels will get bigger and you’ll start seeing pixilation or 2. the pixels will get bigger and the program will smudge the edges of the square pixels so that everything looks fairly normal. But you can’t add detail that isn’t there no matter how much you spend on a graphics program

Sometimes what appears to be bleed through of the ink to the opposite side of the page is really a result of the paper being semi transparent and the ink on the other side being seen through it. It can happen in scanning where the light being shone on the side being scanned passes through the paper and bounces back off the scanner lid through the paper again collecting the back image on the way. Sometimes this can be corrected by inserting a sheet of black or grey paper between the document being scanned and the scanner lid, or beneath the page if a camera is used.

I don’t know how the original Will document has been copied, with a scanner or with a camera device. It’s possible that a better copy could be obtained by giving it some individual attention. Whether the original document is available for that to be done is another matter. Maybe you should contact SP and see what they have to say.

All the best,
Alan

[trish1]

I found a lady from Edinburgh, who for a very reasonable charge "translated" such a will for me. If you are interested send me a pm & I will send the details.

Trish

[AndrewP]

I don’t know how the original Will document has been copied, with a scanner or with a camera device.

Hi Alan,

I saw documents being scanned at an open day at the NAS 'back-shop' a few years back. They were using a 3-colour-image camera system. Three separate images were taken and then electronically combined to produce the full colour image. I am assuming this was the process used for the wills and testaments.

For many of the documents, once they had been imaged in this way and the images put on the NAS internal computer system, the original paper documents were withdrawn from public access and were vacuum sealed and placed in the NAS environmentally controlled storage facility for long-term preservation.

All the best,

AndrewP

[Currie]

Thanks Andrew,

Sounds interesting.

All the best,
Alan

[WilmaM]

Have you tried making it a black & white negative image?
I tried 'lightening' it in my photo shop prog [ACDsee] and the bleed through faded a lot.
Though I agree page 2 is awful!

[SandySandilands]

Thanks everyone.

I'm going to try some of the suggestions later today and I'll let you now how I get on. Fingers crossed.

[Spacot]

Hi
I also have had trouble with an old will, I found our regional library [the main one for the region] had an history dept and a lady there translated it for me, try your library for help

[AnneM]

Hi Sandy

If you can somehow send me a reasonable image I'll have a go at reading it. If you'd like me to try send me a pm and we can try to sort something. I'm usually not too bad a reading old wills. No guarantees though.

Anne

[AnneM]

Actually if you can hang on a little while I'll save the images and try to tart them up a bit and read them. The person giving up the inventory is definitely a John Sandilands and the estate seems to comprise at least a colt and a team of oxen with the values given. As I said no guarantees I'll come up with the definitive version but I'll give it a try and perhaps come up with some clues for you.

Anne

[SandySandilands]

Brilliant, Anne!

Thank you