How to "Photoshop" a scanned ruler

[jont]

George for the insurance claim Fuji is spelled Hasselblad!

[george]

Is it time I moved up to one of the larger models jonty? One of 'em super zoom thingummyjiggers?

[Fairyglass]

Mine's nothing like that- sorry George. Time to get technical with a large hammer

[george]

Cheers for the thought though Ben :thumbsup:

[Daveb]

Follow up to Photoshop users:
Attached Photo taken in a light box.
You are all correct, the photo is much better than the scan.
Now all I need to figure out is how to photoshop it up to the quality of the image on the site on the original post.

Thanks
Dave

[jont]

It is not a million miles away from the version in the original post. Your friends here are the "curves" dialogue to help with the contrast and then try the un-sharp mask in the filters... if you duplicate the layer first and then work on that have a play around to see what you can do.

[Mark H]

Dave - back to your OP, the image you want to achieve has indeed been "Photoshopped". They will have done something like this (in Fireworks I'm afraid, but PS should be similar):

• Remove the real texture of the metal ruler. 50% of this can be done by photographing/scanning carefully, 50% by adjusting brightness and contrast in FW/PS. Your original scanned image (ruler.jpg) is actually a bit better than the photographed version (ruler1.jpg) in this respect.
  
• Add a new layer on top in FW/PS, make a rectangle big enough to half cover the original image below, then change the fill of the rectangle to a gradient (there are different types - you'll have to experiment) and adjust the colours and transparency of the gradient, and repeat this rectangle until you get the effect shown in your OP.

A VERY quick and dirty example based on your original image: