Not a Photoshop problem; it needs Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw, where you can trace it and turn it into a vector graphic. It's doable with the right software, but Photoshop isn't the answer.
You could try selecting by colour range to select all the blacks (or use the magic wand, either way, perhaps use levels to darken the blacks a little first), then go to Select>Modify>Contract. I tried it on the small sample posted here, but there wasn't really enough detail in it anyway to see how much difference it might have made.
Edit: Beaten by Robert with perhaps a better idea.
This really needs to be redone as a vector graphic and Photoshop would not be the tool for that. Bear is right, Illustrator or CorelDraw is where you'll find your solution.
Yep, that's the actual graphic :(.... the engraving will be approx 5 inches tall..... The engraver told them it would take about 3 hours to clean it up enough to use.
Yep, that's the actual graphic :(.... the engraving will be approx 5 inches tall..... The engraver told them it would take about 3 hours to clean it up enough to use.
That's about right, actually. I used to do this kind of stuff for a print shop. It will be very tedious working from such a small original. I may open it up later and take a quick stab at it, just to see if I'm right...
I think Ill go play with it a tad.... could be a painful learning experience! :D
Oh yeah. If you've never used a "bezier curve" tool before, you're in for a real learning experience :-) basically you want to use the auto-trace function to create a vector graphic, then go in and start eliminating anchor points so all your curves are smooth and all your straight lines are clean. The auto-trace is going to trace the jaggies of the bitmap, see?
If you dont get anywere with it PM me and Ill take a crack at it, I did just that sort of thing when I started in advertising and have a library of about 2500 logos converted to vector format...
I used the live trace/black and white logo option.... I got a pretty good result.... the only thing that looks bad is the text..... Im closer than I was a half hour ago! :D
