FINISHING TECHNIQES
An insight on how to use Photoshop to prepare scanned drawings for print and screen view.
SCANNING - Once your artwork is complete the next step is scanning! Flat bed scanning is great for making screen ready images and print ready files. The smallest size you would ever scan is 300 PPI. PPI stands for Pixels Per Inch. This is how we measure the resolution of our images. For more info visit: https://techterms.com/definition/ppi . At 300 PPI your scan will only be as large as the original artwork being scanned. So if your artwork was made small, say size A5 or A4 and you wanted to make an A3 print you would need to scan at a higher resolution. Once you zoom into your image past it’s original size it will loose quality and become pixelated.
So when you make a scan it is best to think about the size you might want it too be enlarged to. If you take your artwork to a Fine Art printing/scanning business they can usually scan your works at larger sizes like 600 PPI or 1200 PPI. If you have a scanner at home, even if its not made for art scanning give this a go to see the differences in size you can get by adjusting your PPI or DPI. If you are looking for info on scanners suitable for artwork look here: https://imagescience.com.au/products/epson-scanners
In the image above you can see a big difference to an original scan and an edited one. Retouching/editing options can come as a personal preference. This is how I retouch my scans so they appear how I envisioned the artworks to be. Most scans will come with dust specks that you will want to remove for printing. And if you have a blank background like I do and are printing on white paper you may want to remove the scanned background altogether. Then you may chose to adjust the appearance of your image through levels, brightness, contrast and darkness. Scans may come through lighter, duller or more faded then the original artwork appears. When this happens we edit the image to make is look closer to the original.
I use Adobe Photoshop to retouch images. This workshop goes through the step by step instructions to use Photoshop to edit your scans. If you do not have access to Photoshop 30 day trails are available at: https://www.adobe.com/sea/creativecloud/start-with-free-creativecloud.html
STEP 1:
Right click on your scan file > Open with > Adobe Photoshop.
Once you have Photo shop open with your artwork visible look at the bar at the top of your screen. Click Windows > Layers. A Layers tab will open.
At the bottom on the layer tab click the icon that says ‘Create a new layer’, it is next too the bin icon. A new layer will appear. Drag it bellow your scan layer. Double click on the layer and type BACKGROUND. In the left bar click the icon that says ‘Paint Bucket Tool’. At the bottom of the left tool bar you will see an icon of two colour squares sitting on top of each other. Double click the front square. This will open ‘Colour Picker’. Set foreground colour to white. Press OK. Now using your paint bucket tool on the background layer, click the art board to make the background white. Make sure you background layer is at the bottom of your layers and click the lock icon in your layers tab.
Now drag your scan layer down to the ‘Create a new layer’ icon. This will make a second layer of your scan. This way you will edit on one layer and can have the original scan layer to compare to. Lock the original scan layer and click the ‘eye’ icon next to your layer. This will make the layer not visible for now. Make sure your new scan layer is at the top in your layer tab.
STEP 3: Editing Image
Image > Adjustments > Levels.
Levels is my best friend when editing my scans! You can move the sliders too adjust the levels of dark, mid and light tones. At this point I am only moving the dark and mid tones to make the drawing marks darker and appear less faded.
You and click on and off the ‘preview’ button to see before and after levels. Once happy with the edited image press OK.
STEP 5: Removing Background
Now that we have made the background white in colour, removing the background will be a smoother process. Select the ‘Magic Wand’ tool in the left tool bar. Take note of the tolerance level at the top bar. The more complicated your image is the lower the tolerance. If the edges on your image are quite simply your tolerance can be higher. For this background I used a tolerance of 7. Try adjusting your tolerance and see how it affects your magic wand selection.
Now using the Magic Wand tool select the background of your scanned layer. Check you selection has only selected the background and not your drawing. Now press delete on your keyboard. Check that your background layer visibility is turned off. You should see a checkered background with just our scanned layer visible. Select any white left over white areas of the background and delete. You can make multiple selections by holding down shift on your keyboard.
STEP 7: Brightening areas in drawing
Because we only deleted the background around out image some white areas in our image will still appear dull and different to our now white background. You may want to adjust some areas. In this drawing I adjusted the petals of the flower and white areas of the butterflies and kangaroo.
To do this I selected the ‘Lasso Tool’ in the left tool bar. Once selected I adjusted the feather to be 10 px in the top tool bar. This makes a softer edge selection. I then drew around the area I wanted to select. Once my area is selected I open ‘Levels’. Moving the right slider I am able to increase the lightness of my selected area. I repeat this process till I am happy with my image.
STEP 2:
Removing colour from your black and white image.
In the top tool bar hover over ‘Image’ > Mode > Grayscale. A pop up may appear asking to flatten image, select ‘Don’t Flatten’. Another pop up may appear asking to discard colour information, press OK.
All colour information is now removed. Another option is too go too ‘Image’ > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. The in the Saturation bar move slider all the way to the left. Press OK.
STEP 4: REPLACE COLOUR
Now that we are happy with the edit of the drawing it is time to work up to removing the background. Image > Adjustments > Replace Colour. Your mouse will turn into and eye drop tool. Using the eye drop mouse click onto the background of the scan layer which you will be retouching. You will notice the image in the Replace colour tap changes - using white too highlight the tone you have just selected in the background.
You may adjust the ‘Fuzziness’ slider. This slider controls the areas of the image to be edited. You will want to make it so the drawing area appears black (not being edited) and the background is white (area to be edited).
Then using the lightness bar you will adjust the lightness of the background moving it up so it appears to be the same whiteness as your background layer. Get as close as you can without adjusting the lightness of the drawing. Press OK.
STEP 6: Removing dust specks and marks
Turn back on the visibility of your background layer. Zoom well into your image and look for unwanted markings such as: marks, stains, dust/hair specks, smudged/bleeding lines/dots, un-rubbed out pencils lines.
Using the ‘eraser’ tool in the left tool bar erase over any unwanted markings left in the background. Take your time and check over whole image. It might not be too visible on screen but when printed you will want to make sure your background appears clean.
STEP 8: FIN!
Your all done! Yay! Have a look and compare your work to the original scan. Save your photoshop file. Save for the web: File > Save As > Save as a jpg, with size under 1 MB. Saving for print: You can print using your photoshop file or save as a pdf for print. It’s good to have the image already set to the size you will be printing. Open up a new document in the printing size, for example A5, A4 or A3. Drag your image from the edited file to the new document. Command T to resize your image to fit your printing template.