Reading faint records
Sometimes it can be hard to read handwritten records where the ink has fainted
Handwritten churchrecords can be hard enough to read even if we don’t have to deal with fainted ink. Digitalarkivet has a feature that can help us.
Looking at the buttons in the upper right hand corner of the scanned pages, we find a button named “Invert”
This feature basically turn everything that is white in the picture to black and vica versa.
I had trouble with this faint record from Hitra. Inverting it makes it slightly easier to read.
This feature is no magic wand that fixes every problem. Sometimes the ink is simply gone and this feature will not help.
Keep this feature in your tool-box. Try it out and see how it works with the particular record you are struggling with.
For a full description of how to navigate the scanned archives have a look at: Church records in the “new” digital archives
Using your photo program and adjusting levels or saturation by clicking on a portion of the light gray writing that should be black, and the background that should be white will brighten it up remarkably.
Hello Vivian. Thanks for visiting and for your most interesting comment. Having played around with Photoshop some years I see how your advice can be helpful.