Brightening Up A Hard to Read Document in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements
Sometimes digital images of documents are just hard to read – the paper is gray, the ink close to the same color, and often with ink bleeding through from the back. Brightening up the document and sharpening up the words can sometimes make it easier to read and hopefully find the clue that helps you break through a brick wall. Sometimes it just takes a couple of minutes in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to clean it up. The steps are the same – just the commands and menus are in different places. So here are directions for both – I’m using Photoshop 2025 and Photoshop Elements 2023 on a Windows machine. I don’t know the commands on the MAC and don’t have an updated version of Photoshop Elements – so hopefully you can figure it out if my directions don’t match what you see on the screen. Photoshop 2025 1. Open the Document 2. Use a Levels layer to adjust contrast. a. From the layers button on the Layers panel (half black/half white circle – Choo...