Digital imaging question

[Textcritic]

Below is a photograph of the fragments from 4Q71a, determined to be a copy of the scriptural book of Jeremiah.




This is only an example, but I am working on fragments from a series of other texts, and I require some advice with regards to digital imaging. I would like to be able to cut the fragments out around their edges, and to manipulate them and move them in an effort to reconstruct texts. I've not really done this before, and I was hoping that someone who has experience working with digital imaging might offer some advice as to what platform I can use to achieve the results that I want, at an affordable cost, bearing in mind my own inexperience in using photo-editing tools.

Thoughts?

[Barnes]

Here is a copy of the image with the white background removed. Not perfect but pretty close.



You could probably use paint to select the individual pieces and move them around. You could download Gimp and copy and paste each piece to an individual layer.

[Barnes]

And since the background of this forum is whit, the pieces would look like this.

[Ramsayfarian]

It probably be faster to print it and cut the individual pieces out and piece it together.

[photon]

Photoshop is the obvious first suggestion, a skilled user could do anything needed. Theres a bit of a learning curve tho. But if you are just cutting and moving around it shouldn't be too hard to learn.

There's a demo version for download so you could give it a try.

The Gimp is a free image editing software package.

Something simpler might be sufficient too, either Paint.NET or Photoshop Elements.

[Hack&Lube]

If you watch CSI, you know you just have to press the "Enhance" button and the computer will automatically put it all together for you as well as extrapolate any missing text to give you the full and complete and accurate document.








In all seriousness, photoshop is probably the cheapest and most consumer friendly and fastest route to do this. Simply scan against a bright colored background that contrasts against the fragments. If the original fragments are not available to you, then you can try the magic wand tool to automatically put a mask around the sections or do it manually with the polygonal lasso tool. Draw a border around the edges of each fragment as if you were tracing the edge or cutting it out in real life. Then do a cut function and paste it as a new layer in a fresh document. Make each fragment an individual layer and you can move each independently.