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Hello everyone, do any of you know of techniques in which a very faded seal, can be seen better? I have taken photos with filters, looked at it in infrared, tried Ultraviolet light (which usually is of no help with seals), and tried to alter the effects with copies of the images on the computer. It is still too hard to get the seals to pop out enough to read it. Any thoughts on different lighting/techniques/etc... any of you have had success with in such a case? Thank you, Greg.

You could try this method. I used an image posted
by the Metropolitan Museum of Art depicting the seals
of their controversial work "Riverbank" attributed to the
10th century artist named Dong Yuan.
What I have created here is a 'red only' channel of the image.
I used the channels feature in Adobe Photoshop. There are
4 faded seals in the image. I adjusted the contrast of the
Filtered image to more clearly identify these seals.

holy shit, nice job.

I know I owe you a phone call, am buried at work and show up here for entertainment 10 minutes a day but want to set some time aside when I am collected to chat.

You own me no reply, but thank you. I would be very happy to hear from you about this mater of VERY faded seals and how to try to bring them out so they can be read. Thank you. Relax, and we will work on it as your time allows. Humbly and sincerely, Greg.

Sorry about that Greg, that note was meant for John R. He has the most expertise with photographic techniques of anyone I know of on this site, so I expect is suggestions will be most useful

Rat, thank you for your input. I did not know his last name until he wrote me privately, but it rang a bell. After a little searching, I found we have a very minor link through James Cahill, or at least what I had read on Professor Cahill's website, which had mentioned John.

Thanks. If you can think of any other techniques, I am curious to know of ANY, as they may be beneficial in the future. I appreciate your kind reply.

Sincerely, Greg.

John R,

I thought I posted an earlier reply to you, thanking you, and stating I would try my best at this with the program on my MacBook Pro, but do not see that in this thread.

I have now done so, but it is not as sophisticated as your adobe program, and I have only barely been able to improve the image, but there is something there now.

May I privately email you the images, if it is not too much trouble, and have you try red only on this seal? There are actually two very faded seals, but I believe one is so far gone that it may be impossible to pull it out no matter what, but I could send those images too.

I can be reached at [email protected] if this is something you would be willing to help me with, thank you. Otherwise, I will ask various friends if they have Photoshop.

Thank you, Greg.

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