scanning question

[tawnie8376]

I really like making art in the traditional format but when I scan it to make prints it doesn't look as good as the original is there anyway I can work with this. If I get my originals scanned elsewhere is that a better plan? I do alot with pastels and colored pencil and just want the most clear and crisp prints possible. Thanks for the advice!

[Burnhym1]

i think it depends on the scanner you are using. if possible find a place with a top notch or higher quality scanner.

[Tuberat]

it can also depend on the setting you're using.

my scanner offers :

contrast level scanning
DPI level (higher the number, the better the scan. i do a standard of 300 for inks and sketch pencils)

Text
Grayscale
Color
and a fourth option i can't remember.

see if you can play with those settinga at all...

[Bettina Marie]

If you have it, Photoshop can be your BESTEST friend!

While the quality of the scanner does play a part in scanning original traditional artwork to sell as prints, Photoshop can help greatly in making the right adjustments so that the final printed image is as close as possible to the original piece as possible...or...if you're lucky...it'll look BETTER than the original piece.

I've been work with and scanning artwork created with Copics, Prismacolour markers and Neopiko markers for MANY MANY MANY years (aka about 20+ years cause I'm older than your average Artists Alley artist >.>;;;) and am always striving to get the final printed product as close to the original piece as possible...but again...it will take some adjusting in some sort of image/photo editing program to give you the desired results you want or need.

I highly recommend scanning your art on the 'colour' (if it is indeed in colour) setting on your scanner at 300dpi. If you're working with black and white line work, 600dpi is preferred, as the higher the resolution during the initial scanning and editing the crisper your lines will be when you reduce your work to the final printed size of 300dpi. If you have Photoshop, set up your scanner so that you can scan your work right into Photoshop and start making adjustments there, adjusting the levels of contrast, colour, balance and so forth. Make sure also that your monitor is configured as close as possible to what it'll actually print as as well, as while it may LOOK right on your screen, what it will print as is another story once you send or bring your work files to the printer of your choice. So test printing at home is a MUST!

Also! Keep in mind the final size you want the artwork printed at as well as leaving an 1/4" white border around your finalized, formated artwork, as MOST printing places, such as Staples, Kinkos, Office Max and so on, do NOT print borderless/full bleed/to the edge of the paper and will automatically create a white border when they print it. ALSO! Most places like Staples and Office Max prefer PDF (Adobe Reader) formatted files as, from experience, seem to use the Adobe Reader program to do all their printing thru. JPEG still works fine, but I honestly recommend PDF format moreso. Also again, make sure to let them know NOT to select the 'FIT TO PAGE', or some such similar option, when printing your work, as that will reduce the size of your work further despite already including the white border on your files.

It really does take a lot of trial and error before you can really figure out what works best in the end, as I know ALL too well from experience when I was first learning how to get prints made of my work.

I hope that helps at least a LITTLE bit ^_^;; Feel free to PM me if you have any questions and I'll help to the best of my abilities!

[tawnie8376]

Thank you for the advice I do have photoshop but haven't really used it that much. I am going to try to play with it. And I know about both of the issues that staples does with adjusting to fit on page and the white border as they did both of those to my first sets of prints and they didn't tell me they were going to beforehand. But thanks again!

[Kogarashi]

As someone with a crap scanner and Photoshop, I'll chime in with what Bettina said.

Definitely scan at least 600dpi. My scanner is calibrated for photos, so is incredibly detailed with what it picks up from a picture. This works for photos, but results in a lot of paper definition (even on my smoothest printer paper), so I tend to scan at 1200dpi or higher so I have a lot of smoothing-from-reducing to work with. Hopefully your scanner is a little better than that.

Do make sure to scan in color for color images. I recommend greyscale for B&W images; B&W scanning mode is usually unforgiving on inked lines. You can reduce the colors in Photoshop to at or near B&W.

I prefer not to do much color or brightness/contrast adjusting in my scanner software. I don't let the scanner sharpen or blur, and only adjust brightness and contrast a tiny touch to get the colors a little darker. Never lighten within the scanner software.

Play around with the adjustment options in Photoshop. You can actually do a whole lot with a passable scan. You'll find most of your toys under Image - Adjustments. Start by trying out Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, and Auto Color, but be sure to Ctrl-Z anything that doesn't look good on the first go.

Some tools (found in the same menu) I rather like are the folowing:
Levels - drag the sliders to lighten and darken while keeping the same general level of contrast. Awesomest tool ever. You can also change it to adjust reds, greens, and blues for some fine-tuning.
Curves - drag the center line to a curve to adjust various picture traits. Play around with it to see what it does.
Color Balance - Great for photos, may also work for your scans. Too much yellow from your incandescent lights? Too much blue from the shadows outside? Slide the colors around to adjust how much of each is in your picture.

To a lesser extent, Hue/Saturation/Lightness and Brightness/Contrast work well, but might mess up too much in your pictures. Try the above tools first.

For printing, I second the PDF recommendation. Staples at least is less likely to mess with the size of the picture if you give them a PDF. Make sure to save each picture as a PDF from Photoshop, to preserve print quality. I had a recent print batch that I ran first as TIFF files and then as PDFs. The TIFFs, despite being set to print 8.5x11 at 300dpi, still came out small--not just resized to the page, but printed as though the dpi was different. When I re-saved the TIFFs as PDFs (without changing anything else), the files printed at the right size. I've had this issue before, where what my computer sees as a certain dpi for a file may be read differently at the printer's computer. So PDF is your safest bet.

Good luck!