[HN Gopher] Creating Embroidered Charts with R and ImageMagick
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       Creating Embroidered Charts with R and ImageMagick
        
       Author : speckx
       Score  : 72 points
       Date   : 2026-01-06 14:33 UTC (4 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (aman.bh)
 (TXT) w3m dump (aman.bh)
        
       | throwaway2046 wrote:
       | That's quite an authentic looking effect! Using it for charts is
       | definitely not the first thing that comes to mind, but it does
       | make them more appealing in a way.
        
       | behnamoh wrote:
       | Related: Does anyone know how we can have monochrome plots that
       | look like the ones you see in old books? They were gorgeous,
       | especially with how creative they had to be in an era that had no
       | UNICODE characters. The ink would also leak and often the lines
       | were rounded and spread out a bit.
       | 
       | I was able to get close: https://imgur.com/a/zLiYlnG
        
         | amnbh wrote:
         | OP of the article here, this looks cool!
         | 
         | Since you're looking at print for reference, it is usually very
         | difficult to get the same imperfections with our nice,
         | optimized-for-clarity digital tools. You already have a nice
         | base layer, which with some similar post-processing can get you
         | what you want. I find it helpful to look at the reference you
         | have in mind and then work backwards from it layer by layer.
         | For example, you can zoom into risograph prints to look at the
         | textures or look at how people recreate print
         | misregistration/ink offset in Photoshop to start with and then
         | try to translate it into code (or just Photoshop if you like!).
         | I gave it a quick shot but more can be done:
         | https://i.ibb.co/QvZvjNpf/output.png
         | 
         | magick input.png \ \\( +clone -blur 0x0.6 -roll +1+1 -level
         | 60%,100% \\) -compose Darken -composite \ -level 48%,55% \ \\(
         | +clone +level-colors grey50 -attenuate 3.5 +noise Gaussian
         | -colorspace gray \ -alpha set -channel A -evaluate set 10%
         | +channel \\) \ -compose Hardlight -composite \ output.png
        
           | behnamoh wrote:
           | thanks for your comment, your version also looks very old-
           | book-y!
           | 
           | I'll try to work on it more. Something that I find tough is
           | the balance between readability of text vs the "FakeBold
           | effect".
        
       | 1a527dd5 wrote:
       | I love ImageMagick. I've used it a few times to make a PDF look
       | scanned.
       | 
       | convert -density 90 input.pdf -rotate 0.5 -attenuate 0.2 +noise
       | Multiplicative -colorspace Gray output.pdf
        
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       (page generated 2026-01-10 23:01 UTC)