More recently, with digital scanning and image manipulation, non-photo blue fulfills its function in a different way.

However, shifting to greyscale and increasing the contrast and brightness of the scanned image causes the blue to disappear.

The exact processes may differ depending on the scanner, settings and image-editing software, but the concept remains the same.

The difference between the non-photo blue and black ink is great enough that digital image manipulation can separate the two easily.

If a black-and-white bitmap setting is scanned in, the exposure or threshold number can be set high enough to detect the black ink or dark images being scanned, but low enough to leave out the non-photo blue.