How to eliminate backrouund on a scan

[vcd4me]

I have a cd that I want to back up. It is just some black writing on the disc.

I scaned the disc and the backround image looks fuunky almost rainbow-ish.

So is there a program where I can scan a disc and then just use the words.

Thanks in advance
VCD4ME

[garrisonkw]

You should be able to modify your scan in pretty much any image manipulation program. I use Photoshop CS, but just about anything should work. Highlight the area you don't like and fill it with grey or white or whatever you feel like.

Incidentally, you're getting the rainbow look because the light from the scanner is reflecting off the disc and breaking apart. Sort of like a prism. Ever pick up a CD and hold it under the light? Move it around a little. You'll see what I mean.

[vcd4me]

I know why it did it

Do you know off hand if I can change the backround to be nothing (blanK)

Thanks
VCD4ME

[junkmalle]

Try an extreme contrast stretch. That may wash all the rainbow colors out to white and leave the black text black. Reducing saturation will remove a lot of the color noise. Or a combination of the two.

[kisrum]

Try what junkmalle said.

Also, Photoshop Elements came free with my scanner. If you have something like that, you can save the scan to a .gif or .png file (which support transparent "colors"), and then you should be able to select an "eraser" that will let you erase the background all the way around the images you want to keep, then hopefully you can just drop it into a new image without all the background. Lot of work, depending on how badly you want it.

[Umbearto]

If it's mostly Text it will be easiest/fastest just to select a similar font in your illustration program and type it. You are pretty much forced to do this for the small point sizes of text found on discs anyways.

For more complex text-like logos you can try scanning in Greyscale/B&W to eliminate the rainbow-6 effect and mask the tonal range of the logo.
Or, you could try separating the channels of a 24bit RGB scan and selecting the cleanest channel to save a new greyscale image from.

A third, and sometimes productive option is to scan in line-art mode breaking everything up into either black, or white (often called 1 Bit Mode) By adjusting the threshold between what is black and what is white you can occasionally come up with an image you can clean-up with sharpen and blur tools to create a good approximation of larger portions of the image while erasing unwanted portions of the disc.

Generally, type what you can, and scan, then mask what you can't easily replicate.