(09-26-2020, 06:46 AM)Thank you so much for taking the time to offer such a conscientious response. I really appreciate it! I am posting a group response below. Wrote: ====================
Yes, more readable.
Since the color balance isn't perfect, you get a yellow cast when you push contrast, so you should transform the image to black and white (Color>Desaturate).
Otherwise, a better technique
- Desaturate the image (Color>Desaturate)
- Use the color picker to set the background color from an area on the page (typically, a margin)
- Decompose the image use Filters>Enhance>Wavelet decompose. The Residual layer at the bottom shows the non-uniform lighting of the page
- Bucket-fill that Residual with the color you sampled at step 2)
- You can increase the sharpness of the characters by duplicating the top layer(s) (Scale 1, Scale 2). At that point adding contrast may be unnecessary.
- If you want to add contrast, create a layer with Layer>New from visible and drag it to the top (you can also use Image>Flatten image) and work on that., but you'll need much less contrast.
(09-26-2020, 09:26 AM)Thank you so much for taking the time to offer such a conscientious response. I really appreciate it! I am posting a group response below.='=================== denzjos Wrote: Another option is first desaturate (Colours / Desaturate / Desaturate)
Then (Filters / Artistic / Photocopy):
(09-26-2020, 10:32 AM)Thank you so much for taking the time to offer such a conscientious response. I really appreciate it! I am posting a group response below.='=================== Blighty Wrote: 1) Desaturate
2) GMIC > Repair > Repair Scanned Document
3) Colours > Curves
4) Perspective
5) Scale (stretch horizontally)
6) Crop
For one page that can be done. But for whole book it will pay to have the camera properly set-up and get good lighting. Less processing afterwards. And that also means less distortion.
I'd like to thank @Ofnuts, @denzjos and @Blighty for taking the time to respond conscientiously to my posted question. I upgraded to what is apparently the latest version of Gimp (2.10.20). Because of my lack of facility with the program, I wasn't able to accomplish much (my fault entirely).
I think @Blighty made an excellent point when he suggested that I try to set up the camera properly, as there are about 140 pages involved here. It's a Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and I must admit that I'm not very good with adjustments but that's what I'm going to look into next. Maybe there's a forum somewhere for that, where I can get some good advice about setting up that camera for this purpose.
Thank you all again so much for responding to my quest for help with this!