Here is another byproduct of yesterday's 8 inch snowfall. The phrase "U S Mail" is on the box ... but hardly shows in the picture. To be fair, the letters are not imprinted in a different color, but instead are a smooth v. stippled backround -- and all in cost-effective black plastic. I have tried adjustments to contrast, brightness, and gamma but did not get any improvement. Does anyone have suggestions on how I could cause just the lettering to become more visible? Thanks MGD

Hmm you could do a select on color in that region of the picture so you just select the letters. Then just change the contrast and/or brightness of that selection.

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If you are careful, its fairly straightforward. [In Photoshop] select in your favorite manner the entire black box. [I included the bricks.] For this, I used the "Magic Wand" and the straight line selection tool thingy. Save this selection as an alpha channel as you'll need it. Deselect everything. Duplicate everything to another layer. Adjust curves, lightening everything. The snow will loose detail. Copy this. Delete this layer. Load the selection alpha channel. Paste Into. Flaten, and touch up with the clone tool as needed.

...may be an easier way...

First I duplicated the layer then I used the magnetic lasso tool to select out the letters, holding the shift key after the first one to add the rest. Then gave it a feathered edge of 2 px, then selected the inverse and deleted the rest the image. Deselected and set the layer to screen at about 17% opacity. You could probably add some texture to simulate the v stippling with some brush strokes like crosshatch or something. Hope this helps. Doug

Calibrate your monitors. I saw it right away. (I just recalibrated mine today)

Thanks everyone ... I'll try it tomorrow morning and then upload the result both here and into the main galleries. @zhounder ... thanks. On this PC (Win95), the monitor dates to 1998 and does not reach a perfect callibration. One of the monitors on the SETI farm is better but also does not get a perfect callibration. Someday I may have to buy a new monitor ... sob, sob. If you don't understand the "SETI farm" reference, search for the 2 threads, "My little Corner" in this forum.

I see the U.S MAIL in the original quite clearly