Is there imaging software that can do this?

Looking for something/a method that could take this:



and remove most of the black in the line, leaving only a very thin outline. Preferably a batch of them.

I'm sure it can be done with Gimp. I doubt we can help you find a program specifically for that, though.

PSP 5

copy road
paste road new layer. Erode.
paste road new layer (screen). Negative image.
combine layers.

-

Alternatively, Tippex pen and photocopier. Sometimes the old ways are the best.

Magic wand, select black zone. Reduce selection by a couple pixels. Fill selection with white.

There are several line and shape thinning (or "skeletonizing") algorithms, though implementing one in particular is often done part of a uni/college DIP course. Yours sounds like a textbook case (e.g. "detect all vertical lines in an image..." but it's still too specific to find a general purpose tool that can do it.

For example, it will be very hard to constrain the thinning to ONE particular feature/line of an image without complicating the detection procedure, unless you can always guarantee e.g. that the thick black line will always be at the left of the picture and/or will always be nearly-vertical, and that you will only process B&W pics.

In case you have some nerd friend that likes coding for free, I can outline how *I* would proceed:

1. Peform image thresholding (transform binary B&W)
   
2. Perform Hough transform for line detection
   
3. Detect strong vertical lines (implying large thickness)
   
4. Perform thinning algo only on region(s) corresponding to said lines.
   

or use freehand/flash to draw a 4pt white vector line up the middle of the fucker.



took about ten seconds total.

Hmm, seems like whenever I copy the original (pdf) to a jpeg, it's as pixelly as hell when zoomed in to the size I need. Is there any way to quickly turn that road into a single, very, very thin line?

invictius said:

Is there any way to quickly turn that rod into a single, very, very thin line?

FTFY

... I'm so sorry.

Snakes said:

FTFY

... I'm so sorry.

Not to worry, I guess my canvas size is too small or something.

How many do you have to do (hundreds?)
Is the line always pretty much verticle? Always on left?
Do you have to keep those "X" markings?
Also what the hell is it and why does it need to be thin?

gggmork said:

How many do you have to do (hundreds?)
Is the line always pretty much verticle? Always on left?
Do you have to keep those "X" markings?
Also what the hell is it and why does it need to be thin?

1) A few dozen.

2) Being a road diagram, things can become quite squiggly.

3) Nope.

4) See above, and I thought instead of whiting out the majority of it, if the whole thing was really thin, I could copy it and drag it to the right, essentially doing the same thing, only easier perhaps.

Is your ultimate goal to make it less pixely? Like you want a thin line so you can "copy and drag it to the right" thus making a thick line again, only where the line is completely black with white edges when zoomed in (instead of having little dots of anti aliased pixels)?

invictius said:

1) A few dozen.

Are you organising an illegal motor race on the Midland Highway?

invictius said:

Hmm, seems like whenever I copy the original (pdf) to a jpeg, it's as pixelly as hell when zoomed in to the size I need. Is there any way to quickly turn that road into a single, very, very thin line?

That looks like a bitmap (non-vector) scan of a map, so it must have a finite resolution. When exporting it, you risk either chopping it up even further, or zooming/enlarging so much that automatic interpolation is produced, and if this is to be automatically processed, you don't want either.

Your best bet, IMO, is findind a different source for that portion of the map (preferably in a vector format like SVG) and edit that to suit your needs.

Maes said:

That looks like a bitmap (non-vector) scan of a map, so it must have a finite resolution. When exporting it, you risk either chopping it up even further, or zooming/enlarging so much that automatic interpolation is produced, and if this is to be automatically processed, you don't want either.

Your best bet, IMO, is findind a different source for that portion of the map (preferably in a vector format like SVG) and edit that to suit your needs.

No vector unfortunately, it's a scan from paper, however that was from the PDF, I also did them as jpg, this isn't too pixelly and comes to about 8cm wide on my screen:

gggmork said:

Is your ultimate goal to make it less pixely? Like you want a thin line so you can "copy and drag it to the right" thus making a thick line again, only where the line is completely black with white edges when zoomed in (instead of having little dots of anti aliased pixels)?

Black edges with white in the middle, so it doesn't use a crapton of ink/toner to print out.