Automate croping without reducing original image size

[mrcoffee2000]

Hello,

I don't do much image editing in anything resembling robust software. Apologies in advance if I use terms that are incorrect (please feel free to correct me).

What I'm trying to accomplish - I routinely digitize archived paper documents that are oftentimes spiral bound or comb bound. I usually unbind these to get good scans. The problem is, the scans always show the edges of the paper and the holes left from binding. I would like to automate 'whiting out' the margins to erase these marks on the scans so I can get a cleaner scan for archiving. I want to retain the original image size so the contents of the document look like the original, including keeping original margins and whatnot.

I am using GIMP 2.10. I found the BIMP plugin and started messing with the features in that. It seems like automated a crop is pretty straight-foward with that plugin, but I don't see a way to retain the original image size. GIMP has options to retain the original image size when cropping an image. Crop may not be the right function to accomplish what I want, so any advice is appreciated.

[rich2005]

(Yesterday, 01:01 PM)mrcoffee2000 Wrote: Hello,

I don't do much image editing in anything resembling robust software. Apologies in advance if I use terms that are incorrect (please feel free to correct me).

What I'm trying to accomplish - I routinely digitize archived paper documents that are oftentimes spiral bound or comb bound. I usually unbind these to get good scans. The problem is, the scans always show the edges of the paper and the holes left from binding. I would like to automate 'whiting out' the margins to erase these marks on the scans so I can get a cleaner scan for archiving. I want to retain the original image size so the contents of the document look like the original, including keeping original margins and whatnot.

I am using GIMP 2.10. I found the BIMP plugin and started messing with the features in that. It seems like automated a crop is pretty straight-foward with that plugin, but I don't see a way to retain the original image size. GIMP has options to retain the original image size when cropping an image. Crop may not be the right function to accomplish what I want, so any advice is appreciated.

Using BIMP.
If the pages are generally the same size, then consider using a mask and applying it using the BIMP "Water Mark" function.
The screen shot(s) showing one edge but the mask (1) could be the whole page size. export as a png to keep any transparency ( say you white-out all edges).
Then it is  The Water Mark function (2) Use the Image watermark option (3) Plant it over the page in the appropriate position (4)