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I have scanned some old pictures. The uneven surface resulted in white wave-shaped stripes in the scan. Is there any way I can remove them in Gimp (pretty inexperienced user) or other free tool? Any help would be much appreciated! Petr

Image With stripes

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Is this texture actually on the original scanned print? \$\endgroup\$
    – osullic
    Jun 12, 2022 at 19:38
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    \$\begingroup\$ Does this answer your question? What is the best way to remove texture from a scanned textured photo paper? \$\endgroup\$
    – Saaru Lindestøkke
    Jun 12, 2022 at 20:21
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    \$\begingroup\$ Can you disclose the make/model of scanner, and the software/version, OS? Also, what medium are the old pictures? Gelatin silver? Newspaper? BW>lab color paper? Are the lines embossed in the original photos or introduced by what you are doing? Have you considered a copy stand instead? \$\endgroup\$
    – Aaron
    Jun 27, 2022 at 1:50
  • \$\begingroup\$ As per other comments, need more information. With anything like this, the best fix is to not get the texture in the first place. As a rule of thumb, anything you can do with the scanner to remove the texture will result in better quality and less hassle then digitally fixing this. \$\endgroup\$
    – AutoBaker
    Jul 18, 2022 at 15:37

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With some scanners, you scan the image twice, and rotate the image by 180° for the second scan. Then in Gimp you load both images, rotate one of them, align them and set the top one to "darken only".

However this requires a very accurate scanner, and many scanners have a lateral distortion that makes such images too different to overlap.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Interesting solution! Unfortunately, I actually had the image scanned, so I don't have the option of trying this myself. If nothing else works, I may try taking a picture of these photos with my cellphone. It has its own problems but still might lead to better results than this. \$\endgroup\$
    – Petr Mareš
    Jun 12, 2022 at 20:28
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    \$\begingroup\$ If you take a picture with a camera (cell phone or else) make sure that you have two light sources. \$\endgroup\$
    – xenoid
    Jun 12, 2022 at 20:57
  • \$\begingroup\$ This is good. It may be possible to scan the photo 4x times by turning 90 degrees each time. Photoshop could auto align layers and you can set up a quick action to change layer transparency and blend them all together. Not sure about Gimp though. \$\endgroup\$
    – AutoBaker
    Jul 18, 2022 at 15:38
  • \$\begingroup\$ Yes but hardly worth it, plus you have to align pictures with two different kind of distortions... \$\endgroup\$
    – xenoid
    Jul 18, 2022 at 15:45

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