Minor cleanup of a scanned image

[pitosalas]

Please refer to this image: http://www.salas.com/elect/testballot2.tif

Notice at the right edge, visible at the top but elsewhere too, is an artifact from the scanner. My first and only idea so far is to simply strip off the right 2-4 columns worth of pixels.

This is not very robust. Do you think I should have some kind of more general smudge removal algorithm? Is there a standard practice for this (must be very common) situation?

Continuing thanks for your help!

Pito

[fmw42]

If the scan is always the same, then cropping or masking are the only two immediate thoughts. I don't think there is any general "smudge" removal algorithm that I know about. But a Google search might offer something.