BMP for scanning has lots of "noise"

[fontmaster]

I scanned in my handwritten sample into Photoshop Element at 600 DPI to convert to a font. The scan looks fine. When I crop each charecter into it's own bmp file, the image still looks fine. When I import into FCP, the preview screen shows about 20 isolated pixels scattered throughout the image. When I load the image into the glyph, I have a contour for each of the group of pixels. This creates a problem because I would have to erase all of them.

Although I realize creating fonts is a teadious process, I did not have this problem on the other images that I imported. I have tried to rescan the image several times at different resolutions, but I have had no luck getting a scan without the noise. Adjusting the erosion, dialate, and other features did not help because the difference between dialate 1 and 2 deletes most of my other pixels.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Jowaco]

Is it possible that your images of individual characters had either dust-spots (to give black spots on white areas) or gaps in the outlines (to give white spots on black areas)?

Have you tried adjusting the threshold level? This could be the cause.

Joe.

[fontmaster]

Thanks for the reply.

The scan looks great in Photoshop or any other viewer - no dust or anything. Quite confusing and frustrating to be honest

My attempts to adjust the threshold were unsuccessful. I followed the insturction in the manual, but since there was not much change - if any at all. I may be doing something wrong.

Any additional advice would be greatly appreciated!

[vanisaac]

Is your printer running low on ink?

[fontmaster]

I may have received a message from my printer a while ago. Kinda freaky that you asked though I guess there may be some "splatter", but when I zoom in while working in Photoshop, I don't see any extra dots.
I will reprint on another printer to see if that solves the problem.

I am anxious to try the threshold idea from the other forum memeber this evening. Both these in combination should help - I hope. Obviously, if anyone else has an idea, please post.

Thanks!

[fontmaster]

I still don't know why the extra dots appear, but adjusting the threshold - without the erode feature turned on (which was my earlier problem) - solved my problem. There was some additional minor clean-up for each charecter, but that is to be expected and was not nearly as bad as it would have been without the threshold adjusted.

Thanks for all your help - this forum is great!