Author Topic: Pulling text from a photo or scan?  (Read 603 times)

August 19, 2019, 08:53:12 AM
Read 603 times

bbanna

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Is it possible to pull just the text off a photo or a scan of an object?

I tried scanning and then trace bitmap, but that did not work.

I am working on a decal project. An old railroad model that I have, I want to recreate it again. Searching through text fonts would take forever. I was hoping I could maybe take a dead on side shot photo or simply lay the model on a scanner and scan it. Then just pull the text off it into inkscape.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Brian

August 19, 2019, 05:30:10 PM
Reply #1

brynn

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Hi Brian,
This forum isn't providing Inkscape support anymore, since the new forum opened on the Inkscape website:  https://inkscape.org/forums/  I can answer your question, but I might be the only one here.  You would get a lot more input in the new forum.

It is theoretically possible to do that.  But the quality could end up being so poor, that it would either take a lot of work in Inkscape to improve the quality, or you just wouldn't want to use the result.  I think it would take less time to find a matching font.

The whole effort depends on getting a high quality scan from either a photo or scanning the train itself.

But....  How large would the decal be?  I'm thinking model train, it can't be much more than an inch in size.  But you couldn't really see text anyway, that small.  So it must be larger?

It sounds like you're on the right track (yuk, yuk :-P) using Trace Bitmap.  That's what I would do, if I wanted to try it.  But what do you mean exactly by "did not work".  I would need more info to be able to help with that.
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August 20, 2019, 04:57:45 AM
Reply #2

bbanna

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Thank yo for the reply. I will take a look at the other forum. Appreciate it.

Brian