License Plate Photoshop

[Kathleen Denson]

Ihave an image that I need to prepare in Photoshop for an offset printing workflow. It's a black and white image, currently rendered in 4 colour greys and blacks, and I need to be able to edit/convert it so that the image is still in cmyk mode, but only contains data on the black plate, with the entire image made up of k values.

I've tried converting to greyscale and back to cmyk, in hopes of discarding the cmy data, but bringing the image back into cmyk mode just re-separates the image onto all four plates. I've also tried forcing the image to the black plate with the Channel Mixer monochrome settings- it does work, but the quality of the image suffers enough that it doesn't seem worth it.

So far, my preferred method has been a workaround with InDesign. I've found that if I convert the image to greyscale, place it in InDesign, and export the indd file as a PDFx-1a with US Web Coated SWOP v2 output intent, (part of my workflow setup) the resulting image in the PDF only contains k values. (According to Acrobat's output preview). This has worked in our workflow so far, but I want to know if there's a better way to do this in Photoshop. I'd be surprised if you couldn't create a cmyk image containing only k black ... unless it's good practice to just use Acrobat or another program for converting black and white images like this. I'd appreciate any input!

There are lots of ways of converting am image to grayscale in Photoshop - do an online search - then Place the image in InDesign. For colour images always work in RGB color mode and Place these in InDesign, do not covert your colour images to CMYK (unless there's a very specific reason). Export your files from InDesign to PDF/X-4 for your commercial printer (unless they have another spec).

c_pfaffenbichler, can you describe to me in a little more detail how to do this? I've tried copy/pasting between channels, but couldn't get it to work- I feel like there's some picky setting or technical detail that I'm missing.

"From what you've said, it seems I've been doing the right thing by creating gresycale images, placing them in InDesign, and then exporting with my desired output intent. Maybe I'm fundamentally confused about how greyscale vs cmyk colour data are treated within the same file- if I understand correctly, a PDF/X-1a can contain greyscale and cmyk data, but only has one output intent. If the output intent is a cmyk profile, and you export the (InDesign) file with "Preserve Numbers", does that mean that k values from a greyscale image will be mapped to the black plate by default in the pdf?"

I have found this thread so useful, thank you for explaining things so clearly. I have had so many issues in the past with printing BW photographs using commercial printers. I am now preparing to self-publish a BW photo book on an HP Indigo 100K press, and image quality is key. My printers are recommending grayscale to avoid colour cast issues, but pure grayscale is tricky to get the blacks right. So if I understand this thread correctly, I can now print images which have been prepared as grayscale files in PS and placed in InDesign, then exported as print-ready CMYK K-channel only files. As I don't use InDesign this critical final stage has been missing, and no one has made the link between the trouble I have been having and the fact that the PS CMYK files are not recommended for BW printing! Hurrah, and thank you

It is easy enough to "boost" the dark tones with supporting neutral CMY values to add density, while leaving the mid to lighter tones K only so that they are not as susceptible to grey balance shifts.

You're going to get a color cast in an Indigo no matter how you send your document (color or grayscale), due to the screening algorithm. Ask the printer to run a test for you. Make a document in Lab that is Lstar 50 (A&B zero), send it that way, RGB, CMYK whatever, and ask them to print the entire sheet and examine it.

So there you have it. The license plate is now blurred in a way that people are unable to tell the numbers and letters. You can use any of the other blur effects, but my personal favorite is the motion blur.

I have a dashcam that records video at 1920x1080 quality. I want to be able to read the license plate of a car that passed me by tonight. When I play the video and freeze it, the plate is blurry. It was night but there was light from streetlights and my headlights. The quality I think is not bad... but I don't know. There are no discernable characters to me, but I've come across a few tutorials which make this seem possible.

My first question is how do I extract one frame at its highest quality? I can play the video and take a screencap while it is paused, but I don't think that gives me the best possible quality image to work with.

My second question is how do I enhance the image? I have access to Photoshop Elements on a Windows computer and a full version of Photoshop, I believe Photoshop 7, on an Apple computer. Would prefer to use the Elements one, but will do whatever is recommended.

One of the better ways to do this, if you have a video clip is to average the frames, which I don't think you can do with either of the programs you have. What you basically do is extract the frames from the video, as you mentioned above, but then you take all those good frames and align them so the license plate is registered as close as possible. Best to crop the images to the plate. Then with a later version of PS, you can use statistics and get the median or mean of those frames. It's a proc

Thank you. I know it may not be possible, but I'd like to try. The tutorials that came up when I googled this make it seem possible. It just depends what information is hidden in the image and applying the right tools to extract it.

If I import the frames to layers, well it take every single frame from the video and make it a layer? The car is only visible for ten frames or so in the middle. Should I trim the video down first? And can Photoshop Elements do that? The video editing program I have can't trim a video without exporting it as a different file type and I think I'd lose quality there.

One of the better ways to do this, if you have a video clip is to average the frames, which I don't think you can do with either of the programs you have. What you basically do is extract the frames from the video, as you mentioned above, but then you take all those good frames and align them so the license plate is registered as close as possible. Best to crop the images to the plate. Then with a later version of PS, you can use statistics and get the median or mean of those frames. It's a process called, "Drizzle," and you can read about it here: -labs.com/craig/resources/Articles-&-Reviews/Drizzle_API.pdf

Is there any way to use photoshop to deblur a License Plate? My car was parked on the street when a guy backed into my vehicle. Even though my security camera recorded the entire event, the license plate isn't as clear as I'd like it to be. If there is any way I can deblur the license plate, I can file a claim with my insurance. It'll cost me $700-$900 to fix the damage to my front bumper without going through my insurance. So any help will be greatly appreciated. I've attached the blurred image below. If anyone wants the video I can upload it too.

I'm attaching a screen shot of what I did to the image you uploaded as a sample. It looks like the first number is a 5? But I am not sure about the rest. Is the video that you said you have any better quality than what you uploaded?

I used the shake reduction filter to get these results and you can see the settings I used in the window. I also tried Smart Sharpen, and I didn't get as good of results as Shake Reduction. Try it and see what you can come up with.

I have almost the same situation. A Toyota Pick up (Perhaps Tundra) hit me and ran away before I was able to get close to them. I was able to use my cellphone and take three photos, but the plate number is not clear (I am kind of able to read 7JIP but the last three numbers are very hard to understand from the original photo. Could you please help me.

There's really not enough there to read the plate. In the OP's post, I was able to get a bit more resolution because he had a video, and I used a process of stacking the video frames and using statics to get a higher res image. If you have some of the plate, you can still go to the police and they can have more to go on with the numbers you have and the type of car that it is.

Create a new layer by pressing the Create New Layer button at the bottom of the Layers palette and rename it Plate. Press the U key to switch to the Custom Shape tool and choose Rounded Rectangle from the menu at the top of Photoshop, make sure that the Fill Pixels icon is checked and set the Radius to 20 pixels.

Set your foreground and background colors to #e9e9e9 and #d2d2d2 respectively, then drag a nice rectangular shape onto the stage. I took my tape measure to the garage and figured out that the standard US license plate is a 2:1 aspect ratio, so my rectangle is 500250 pixels.

Since most license plates have a reflective quality that makes the surface shimmer, lets add that effect with a little noise. Select Filter>Noise>Add Noise from the main menu, set the Amount to 2% and make sure that Gaussian and Monochromatic are checked before hitting OK.

Lets now contract the selection again (Select>Modify>Contract) but this time lets go 10 pixels. Press Delete (PC: Backspace) to remove the area inside the selection and press Command-D to release the selection.

Create a new layer beneath the text layer we just created by holding down the Command (PC: Ctrl) key while clicking the Create New Layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette and rename it Text Bevel.

You could go crazy with some of the grunge brushes I handed out in the Hero Header II and Create An Old Envelope tutorials, and bend the edges a little like in the Sticker Edge Peel lesson to really age the plate.

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