How can I print in black and white, without any grey tones.

[PrimroseHall]

I have cocked up a load of documents I scanned into my computer. My network was down so I used an SD card to transfer my scans from my printer to my PC. They are just handwriting sheets for DS, but they were expensive so I decided to scan them in so I could print out what I needed, when I needed it rather than let him write on the originals or have to keep messing around with my temperamental photocopier.

I think the SD card has picked up on the slight grey tone of the colour of the original sheets and now it is costing me a fortune to print them out as they have been saved, and are printing as A4 sized photos, rather than A4 sheets with a small amount of black writing on them. They look dingy as well .

I still have the originals and my network is working again, but it took hours (and hours and hours) to scan these f*ing things in the first time and I'm loathe to do it again. Is there anyway I can convert the greyness into white? Printing in black and white won't help as it will still print the in-between greys.

Any help appreciated.

Do you have photoshop? If so you need to change them from greyscale to black and white (monotone). Or change the contrast to high contrast in whatever image product you have. Your printer may also have this facility - look at print properties when you go and print.

Thanks homi

I don't have photoshop unfortunately. DP has suggested that Picasa might have tools to adjust the contrast so I'm downloading that now. Thanks for you help.

When you say 'print' look in the printer dialogue box - if there is a 'color' tap you can select greyscale - black cartridge only. I am not sure if that will work in this instance.

Otherwise if they are images you should be able to turn up the contrast/autofix in Picture Manager, if you have it.

Autofix just seemed to clarify the black lines without affecting the grey background.

Picasa seems to be doing the job though. I'm using the highlighter to brighten the background, and then the sharpener to clarify the text.

I've just printed a test sheet and it's coming out just as I wanted. Thanks both of you.

Will A character recognition programme translate it into typeface?

I've never heard of those programmes Katy. Do they only work with text? There are also basic diagrams on these sheets.

Are any of these programmes free, do you know?

Sorry I don't know if they are free - but they do only do text I think drawing would need to be cut ^ psted in

Normally there is one with your scanner programme I think they might be called things like Omnipage, Pagemanger & OCR

Hmm, OCR rings a bell.

I'll have to dig out my printer manual.

Anyway, at least I can print them now without wasting all that ink. I was gutted as I sent 200 pages to print and didn't bother to check until the printer alerted me that it had run out of ink - that was about £30 wasted (more than the value of both books put together and all the print-outs look rubbish too.