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Looking for whiteboard photo cleanup software

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mwb1100:
I'm looking for software that will take my pictures of whiteboards and perform as close to a one-click clean up that makes the photos usable as images.

The software that searches usually point to is "Whiteboard Photo", which seem to have been acquired by an outfit that makes 'smart whiteboards', so the software has gotten expensive and seems to be neglected in the support department. I think they'd rather you buy an expensive whiteboard system rather than use some cheap software to cleanup any old picture.

I've also come across PhotoNote by South Wedge Software (http://www.southwedgesw.com/photonote/), which seems to be pretty much what I want.  But still, it costs $50, and I'd rather pay less or nothing if I could.  

One option I thought I'd try is to use something like Sagelight (or Gimp or Photoshop Elements), which I'm certain can be made to do what I'd like, but I'm not certain that *I* could get it to happen.  We have licenses for each of the above, but I can't get good results.  This is because I know absolutely nothing about image enhancement.  I can barely work the red eye removal tools in these things, so my attempts at getting whiteboard photos to look decent amount to randomly moving sliders and pressing buttons (I'm not joking about this!).  A four year old could work more intelligently.  If anyone can give me directions that will get decent results that involve no more than 2 or 3 steps and doesn't use meaningless (to me) jargon such as "gaussian blur" or "histogram", I'd be very, very happy.

If that isn't possible, I'll be happy to pay the $50 to South Wedge.  Well, maybe not happy, but satisfied enough.

As an example, here's a whiteboard photo:

Looking for whiteboard photo cleanup software

And here's what PhotoNote's trial did with essentially one click (I did have to drag around some cropping guides):

Looking for whiteboard photo cleanup software

That result is fine and was easy to get.  But if something I already have can do similar without too much trouble, I'd rather go that route.

nudone:
It looks like you could get the same results with the software you have by using The Levels features - or Auto Levels. Or by using some other image manipulation tool you find easier to use, as they are all likely to have some kind of Levels function built in.

You could tweak things further but 99% of the work will be done with a very quick click on Auto Levels. Maybe that's what you've already tried though.

Renegade:
It looks like you could get the same results with the software you have by using The Levels features - or Auto Levels. Or by using some other image manipulation tool you find easier to use, as they are all likely to have some kind of Levels function built in.

You could tweak things further but 99% of the work will be done with a very quick click on Auto Levels. Maybe that's what you've already tried though.
-nudone (May 21, 2011, 05:42 AM)
--- End quote ---

+1

Effects like "Find edges" could help out. Try recording a macro and using a few effects to get things working. You'd have a 1-click solution then.

mwb1100:
Thanks for the suggestions. 

I might not have a chance to try these out until I get to work on Monday. I'll let you know if they work out for me.

mwb1100:
It looks like using a general purpose photo editor for this special purpose just isn't going to produce the results I could get with PhotoNote (at least not without more work than I want to do and/or more knowledge than I have).  I did find these notes from WikiHow describing how one might do this with PhotoShop:

  - http://www.wikihow.com/Copy-a-Whiteboard-With-Your-Digital-Camera-or-Camera-Phone

And I got 'good-enough' results with Sagelight by using the 'Automatic Levels" option in the "Levels Adjustment" tool, followed by playing around with the "Smart Fill Light" gadget. 

That's probably not too much work, but I still feel like I'm just randomly monkeying around and not getting results that are quite as good as I'd really like. I'll probably cough up for PhotoNote next time  I need this.

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