Hi, I was trying to enhance or restore the text of this grayscale document, and tried to follow what is indicated in this post:

Gray level separations | Faded letter back to like new.

But it doesn't seem to work for this document. Any suggestions or pointers?

My try, using filtyer Generic/Erode twice.



Hope you can read and understand the major part of the document.

Do you have the original of the document? Can you re-scan?

This document has had a threshold(*) applied which converts it to just 2 colours – pure black and pure white. But some parts of the text has been converted to pure white. This has the effect of erasing parts of the text. If you zoom in close you can see it. So the text is not faded, it is gone.

You can try (Filters > Generic > Erode). This will improve some parts, but make other parts worse.

You need a grayscale scan of the image with about 256 colours. Then it can probably be restored.

(*) This image has 4 colours, not 2. Probably some artefacts from saving as jpg

Hola Jgratero

The birth certificate has been written by a mechanical typewriter because some voyels such as "o" or "a" (not always) or "e" are written _under the line of other letters.
Knowing this rule could help to decipher some vanished letters.

Consider the final date. Hereafter enclosed is a hypothesis:

July 30, 1963

You are the only person who really knows the full context.

Why "1963"? Because of "mil novecientos sesenta y tres". "Elementary, my dear Watson"

• "novecientos" is strongly probable because of the number of letters.
• The crossword puzzle is based on the unknown month of 7 letters before "y" (and).
  "y tres" excludes 1923 "veintitrés" without white-space separator before " tres".
  "sesenta" perfectly matches both the 7-letters criteria and the residual shape of the lost word.
• This era is also compatible with a mechanical typewriter

You forgot to blur all real names, the quoted town in the North of Bogota.
Two countries are written: Colombia and Venezuella.
Not so far in Brazil, "Certidao de Nascimento" includes the name of Grandfather.
Hence "abuelos paternos" stands for paternal grandparents.
It is up to you to decode the first date since you know the answer: maybe September 5, 195*?

Thank you very much! This filter did the trick!

I used to have the original, but I am not sure whether it remained behind in Venezuela, or whether it is with a relative in the US. I need to ask, to request a second (and better) scan. If we find it, we will do that scan following these specs, thanks!

That is a superb job! Indeed, context help to solve this puzzle.

If I remember correctly, the issue with this document was the quality, or rather the wear of the tape used on the typewriter. The first lines were not that legible.