Receipt Restoration

[seeker]

A receipt had become bleached out, thus leaving it blank. I found that by sliding it across the surface of a lit lightbulb, it turned the unprinted areas black, and left the typed areas white, thus making it legible. Now I want to invert the colors so that it is like it was originally. As far as I could find, my scanning (Windows) and printing functions (HP) don't offer this ability. Is there a program that will...preferably free or cheap?

[Q]

Scan it, bring it in to MS Paint, Image > Invert Colors.

[Bearclaw]

A lot of times MS Paint won't do the trick. It will just corrupt the image. If you have photoshop, use that. However, I doubt it unless you wouldn't have asked in the first place.


So ya, try MSpaint, but the invert has never worked for me.

[Q]

OK BEAR.

You could try Paint.Net. It's free and much closer to Photoshop than MS Paint.

[Bearclaw]

OK BEAR.

You could try Paint.Net. It's free and much closer to Photoshop than MS Paint.
ANYTHING would work better than MSPaint.

Also, I wasn't trying to make it sound like your idea was dumb, it has just never worked for me. I just always use photoshop. ;)

[Q]

ANYTHING would work better than MSPaint.

Also, I wasn't trying to make it sound like your idea was dumb, it has just never worked for me. I just always use photoshop. ;)

This is why I like you.

[seeker]

OK BEAR.

You could try Paint.Net. It's free and much closer to Photoshop than MS Paint.

MS Paint was a total loss, so I tried Paint.Net. It appears to be working, although very slowly. That's probably not due to a fault of the program, because I scanned at a very high resolution, which caused the file to be about 47MBs in size. It just finished the inversion while I was typing this, and the results are as good as can be expected, considering what it had to work with. The image is splotchy because there are some areas that could not be darkened properly because of being washed out. Yet, the vital areas did come out well. Now to see if PNY will accept it for a RMA? Whether they do or not, this has been a very good exercise that will continue to be of use.

0ne thing that I noticed is that both Paint and Paint.Net used up all of the virtual memory, even though I have it set for Windows to manage it and I have 2GBs of RAM. I guess that I will have to use a lower resolution next time.

[nekrosoft13]

47mb is not that bad ;)

i have few scans that are about 500mb

[seeker]

47mb is not that bad ;)

i have few scans that are about 500mb
I would have agreed, until trying this. It took an eternity for it to complete each step, and after the inversion it was unable to print a copy of it. I started over with a lower resolution scan and it finished in a snap. It's probably a problem with my system, because I have been having problems with this MB. More than once, when I have removed and reinstalled it, it would not put out any video signal. The same was true until I decided to try it again, and for some reason it worked when I installed the RAM in the secondary channel, instead of the primary. I had tried swapping channels before, and it didn't help, so I have no idea of why it did this time. The RAM slots are clean and undamaged as far as I can tell.

I have a new MB that should arrive Monday, but considering my luck with MBs lately, I'm a bit reluctant to change anything while it is working.