  We present an improved scheme for absorption imaging of alkali atoms at
moderate magnetic fields, where the excited state is well in the Paschen-Back
regime but the ground state hyperfine manifold is not. It utilizes four atomic
levels to obtain an approximately closed optical cycle. With the resulting
absorption of the corresponding two laser frequencies we extract the atomic
column density of a $^{39}$K Bose-Einstein condensate. The scheme can be
readily applied to all other alkali-like species.
