Adobe PhotoShop -- One Button Access to Actions

If you are not already familiar with making PhotoShop Actions, please read this brief tutorial: How to Create a PhotoShop Action and shortcut keys.

Using functions programmed on the X-keys Professional saved our operator thousands of mouse clicks, and triggering PhotoShop Actions applied filters with specific, consistent settings over the full 3200 pages of scanned text and images.

Photographs, were separated from text, and line drawings and filtered to remove moire’e pattern. Text was enhanced before OCR to improve readability.

The following steps were performed for every page of the cyclopedia in PhotoShop:
1. Open file (while this seems too simple an item to include as a step, combining Next File, Edit, and Select saved us more than 10,000 mouse clicks).
2. Crop & Align
3. Convert to Grayscale
4. Select Photographs
5. Apply custom blur to photographs
6. Select text and line drawings
7. Apply custom blur to text and line drawings
8. Adjust Brightness & Contrast on text and line drawings
9. Apply Sharpen filter to entire page.
10. Save and Close File

The keys programmed for PhotoShop:
1. PhotoShop (Ctrl + Alt + 3) launches the program with its assigned Windows Shortcut. Since PhotoShop loads an extensive list of settings each time it is launched, we leave it open for the duration of the editing session.
2. Open Next File (Down Arrow, Alt + F, Enter) steps to the next consecutive file and opens it in PhotoShop. If PhotoShop is not set as the default program for opening TIF files, see this brief tutorial: Changing Windows Defaults for file types.
3. Crop -- The PhotoShop shortcut (C) takes us directly to the Crop tool. While we did the best we could to maintain alignment during the scanning procedure, some slight rotational correction is needed on many pages and is easily done with the “perspective” function in PhotoShop's Crop tool.
4. Grayscale -- This key opens the Image menu, selects Mode, Grayscale, and starts the conversion (Alt + I, M, G, Enter). The scan could have been performed in Grayscale, but we trust PhotoShop to do a better job of the conversion than the scanning software.
5. Marquee -- The Marquee tool (M) is used for selecting images. Pressing the Shift key allows the operator to add more areas to the selection. In addition to the Shift we programmed on the X-keys, our operator found it useful to have an X-keys Foot Pedal programmed as an alternate Shift key.
6. DeSelect -- The “Oops” key (Ctrl + D) clears the selection so the operator can start over.
7. Photo Blur -- This key triggers the first action we programmed into PhotoShop (Ctrl + Shift + F9), a 2.0 pixel Gaussian blur applied only to the photographs. Since we are scanning photographs that have been halftone screened, the blur eliminates any moire' pattern resulting from the scan, and return the image closer to it's original form. When we enlarge the image, the individual dots from the screening will not be perceptible.
8. Select Inverse -- This key (Ctrl + Shift + I) selects everything on the page except the photographs we just filtered.
9. Lin/Text Blur -- We use another PhotoShop action (Ctrl + Shift + F10) to apply a 1.5 pixel Gaussian blur to all text and line drawings. This will smooth out the lines and make the text easier for the OCR program to recognize.
10. Bright/Contrast -- Our third PhotoShop action (Ctrl + Shift + F11) Creates an adjustment layer which only affects the selected text and line art, sets the Brightness at -25 and contrast at +50. This eliminates extraneous information the scanner picked up in the background and provides better separation of the text from the background, making it even easier for the OCR program to do its job.
11. Flatten -- This key opens the Layer menu and selects the Flatten option (Alt + L, F) to combine the adjustment layer with the original and also leave us on the background layer for applying the next filter.
12. Sharpen -- The fourth PhotoShop action we use (Ctrl + Shift + F12) applies Unsharp Mask with the settings: Amount = 200%, Radius = 1.5 pixels, Threshold = 0. This sharpens the entire page before saving.
13. Close & Save -- This key (Ctrl + W, Enter) is self explanatory.
14. - 18. Cut, Copy, Paste, Redo, Undo -- These are the common windows shortcuts (Ctrl + X) (Ctrl + C) (Ctrl + V) (Ctrl + Y) (Ctrl + Z) used not only in PhotoShop but our other programs as well.

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