Windows 7 app to fill areas of photo in black

Basil · 15 Aug 2017

Basically I am looking for the best / easiest way to take a photo of the copper tracks side of a single sided printed circuit board and fill in the tracks in solid black so the new image can be printed on clear acetate sheet to make a copy board through photo resist coated PCB and etching. Some boards will have copper coloured tracks, some like this example with tinning on the copper so it looks silver. I have tried filling in with a digital paintbrush in Paint, but it's inaccurate and very tedious. Would some sort of PC Tablet with a stylus be better, or is there an app to flood selected areas in black? Thanks

fireberd · 15 Aug 2017

I suspect you will need a PCB production program that possibly will do that. But even with the PCB program you may not be able to "reverse engineer" the board. Maybe the high end (high cost) Photoshop will do that???

Mellon Head · 15 Aug 2017

You could try Paint.NET. It's free, and it has a selectable threshold for the flood utility sensitivity, meaning that it will ignore small gaps if necessary.

It might be easier to work with than Paint.

Your alternative is something like Kicad (it's free, IIRC), but that would require you to completely redraw the board.