I restore old pinball machines. I recently received what is possibly the last surviving schematic for a 1937 pinball machine, 34"x22". To prevent it being lost, I'm eager to share it. I have a decent scan of it, but I was hoping to render it as a vector drawing so that it was easier for people to view and print.
What's the approach I should take for getting this into Inkscape in decent shape? Naively auto-tracing right from the bitmap doesn't work well, so I'm thinking:
In GIMP, clean the scan up as much as possible
Separately trace the large text are on the right, adjusting settings until I get good-looking text
Try to trace the whole drawing in one go and see if I can get a decent result,
If that doesn't work, use GIMP to remove the text from the circuit diagram and trace that on its own,
Then come back and either the whole text layer or individual text zones,
That's my best guess before trying it. Any pointers from people with more experience?
My experience is it's always a bit of a dilemma what you'd consider as a genuine representation of the original.
Do you want to restore how it might have looked when it was fresh out of the drafting table or keep the paper creases?
If the contents are more important then retyping the text could be an option -so it can be searched.
I'd probably cut the letterings into separate files and autotrace them for better or worse.
Cleaning up in gimp would be of using the curves and maybe some unsharp mask filter.
For the drawing schematics I'd redraw them in inkscape manually so the lines are perfectly straight, horizontal/vertical where needed. Don't know how your decent scan looks, but if straight lines bend with the folds it's a guessgame to correct it with a raster editor.
Autotracing schematics don't yield to the cleanest results in my opinion.
Thanks! Very helpful. I'm a little torn, in that I think the original is lovely enough to frame, and the signs of wear add something to it. But for a vector version, I think what I'm most looking for is a clean copy for printing and using via tablet while somebody is working on the machine. I'd love to keep the original typeface and the hand lettering, though, as anybody working on a pinball machine from 1936 is going to love those details.
Given what you say, I'll take a rough pass at it to see how far I can take it. But if not, this may have to be a project for a future volunteer. If somebody sees this and is excited to help preserve pinball history, please get in touch with us: https://theflip.museum/
This is a major project given the really fine lines. I'd start with a fairly high resolution scanner for this. Most of what needs to be done happens well before it gets to Inkscape. Getting clean binary high resolution images will be key, and they can be automatically stitched together rather than relying on the phone's panorama feature. Then center line tracing - and there will still be a lot of cleaning up afterwards.
Thanks! Given the document's size and fragility, scanning it is a challenge, but I've found one local vendor with the gear for it. The price, $175, is eye-watering, but I think it's worth at least trying out for this. Eventually I'm hoping to preserve dozens of these, so I'm going to have to find a way to bring the cost down.
Do you have a sense of the resolution needed to make something like this work? My panorama version is at ~250dpi. Given the fineness of the lines, I'm wondering if I should aim for something more like 600 dpi.
The way I see it, you can always downsample from a high resolution. I'd say 600dpi is a minimum. I am not sure how delicate it is - our local library offers the use of a high resolution scanner with a library card, and they scan archival quality materials.
Scanning as is is one thing. That local vendor seems more than capable doing the job. We have a similar company here which can scan paintings inside their frames.
However the plan has folds in it and needs to be perfectly flattened to make such a scan worthwile.
Would suggest contacting them if they know a poster restoration professional who could mount it on a flat surface and/or iron the paper.
Or if they have a method putting it on a vacuum bed/layering a heavy glass atop.
Because without such you'd end up with high resolution straight lines which are curved on screen.
I had the pleasure restoring an old family tree which had both straight lines and hand lettering. As luck would have it, the paper was torn into a few pieces.
Which, fortunately made it easy to use a flatbed scanner of A4 size. Used an epson's "perfection" top of the line scanner -which albeit dated can perform scanning at the highest resolution available.
Used maybe 2400 dpi for the lettering and redrawn the lines. For further improving was thinking of turning the hand lettering into a font or to trace it manually as a centerline trace for even stroke widths.
Ended up just autotracing them after an initial cleanup. Otherwise it'd be too clean for its purpose and require a ton more work.
Beyond the Basics Strategies for tracing an old circuit diagram?
Inkscape.org
I restore old pinball machines. I recently received what is possibly the last surviving schematic for a 1937 pinball machine, 34"x22". To prevent it being lost, I'm eager to share it. I have a decent scan of it, but I was hoping to render it as a vector drawing so that it was easier for people to view and print.
Here's a PNG of the panorama made from 12 cameraphone shots: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kiFRpCaiPeasO-UOziKi-dp01Ht84M5P/view?usp=sharing
What's the approach I should take for getting this into Inkscape in decent shape? Naively auto-tracing right from the bitmap doesn't work well, so I'm thinking:
That's my best guess before trying it. Any pointers from people with more experience?
My experience is it's always a bit of a dilemma what you'd consider as a genuine representation of the original.
Do you want to restore how it might have looked when it was fresh out of the drafting table or keep the paper creases?
If the contents are more important then retyping the text could be an option -so it can be searched.
I'd probably cut the letterings into separate files and autotrace them for better or worse.
Cleaning up in gimp would be of using the curves and maybe some unsharp mask filter.
For the drawing schematics I'd redraw them in inkscape manually so the lines are perfectly straight, horizontal/vertical where needed. Don't know how your decent scan looks, but if straight lines bend with the folds it's a guessgame to correct it with a raster editor.
Autotracing schematics don't yield to the cleanest results in my opinion.
Thanks! Very helpful. I'm a little torn, in that I think the original is lovely enough to frame, and the signs of wear add something to it. But for a vector version, I think what I'm most looking for is a clean copy for printing and using via tablet while somebody is working on the machine. I'd love to keep the original typeface and the hand lettering, though, as anybody working on a pinball machine from 1936 is going to love those details.
Given what you say, I'll take a rough pass at it to see how far I can take it. But if not, this may have to be a project for a future volunteer. If somebody sees this and is excited to help preserve pinball history, please get in touch with us: https://theflip.museum/
This is a major project given the really fine lines. I'd start with a fairly high resolution scanner for this. Most of what needs to be done happens well before it gets to Inkscape. Getting clean binary high resolution images will be key, and they can be automatically stitched together rather than relying on the phone's panorama feature. Then center line tracing - and there will still be a lot of cleaning up afterwards.
Thanks! Given the document's size and fragility, scanning it is a challenge, but I've found one local vendor with the gear for it. The price, $175, is eye-watering, but I think it's worth at least trying out for this. Eventually I'm hoping to preserve dozens of these, so I'm going to have to find a way to bring the cost down.
Do you have a sense of the resolution needed to make something like this work? My panorama version is at ~250dpi. Given the fineness of the lines, I'm wondering if I should aim for something more like 600 dpi.
The way I see it, you can always downsample from a high resolution. I'd say 600dpi is a minimum. I am not sure how delicate it is - our local library offers the use of a high resolution scanner with a library card, and they scan archival quality materials.
Scanning as is is one thing. That local vendor seems more than capable doing the job. We have a similar company here which can scan paintings inside their frames.
However the plan has folds in it and needs to be perfectly flattened to make such a scan worthwile.
Would suggest contacting them if they know a poster restoration professional who could mount it on a flat surface and/or iron the paper.
Or if they have a method putting it on a vacuum bed/layering a heavy glass atop.
Because without such you'd end up with high resolution straight lines which are curved on screen.
I had the pleasure restoring an old family tree which had both straight lines and hand lettering. As luck would have it, the paper was torn into a few pieces.
Which, fortunately made it easy to use a flatbed scanner of A4 size. Used an epson's "perfection" top of the line scanner -which albeit dated can perform scanning at the highest resolution available.
Used maybe 2400 dpi for the lettering and redrawn the lines. For further improving was thinking of turning the hand lettering into a font or to trace it manually as a centerline trace for even stroke widths.
Ended up just autotracing them after an initial cleanup. Otherwise it'd be too clean for its purpose and require a ton more work.
Thanks, Lazur, for mentioning all this! Great points. I'm going to have to come up with a better plan.