GCU Forum - Scanning pencil art

Sally_131513 Senior Member artist Posts: 422	Scanning pencil art Jul 10^th, 2011, 9:30am Does anyone know how to properly scan pencil art so it turns out black and white or (normal)? Mine turns out a tad pink and don't know why cause other things scan perfectly. I have done about everyway i can think of. Help, Sal
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Alison_154281 GCU Newbies artist Posts: 5	Re: Scanning pencil art Reply #1 - Jul 10^th, 2011, 9:41am Hi Sal, I don't know if you are scanning into a program like Photoshop but if you are you can go to Image-Adjustments-Brightness/Contrast and alter it there.
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Sally_131513 Senior Member artist Posts: 422	Re: Scanning pencil art Reply #2 - Jul 10^th, 2011, 9:43am Nah it doesn't look perfect there but, thanks. Sal
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Desiree_154379 GCU Newbies artist Posts: 2	Re: Scanning pencil art Reply #3 - Jul 10^th, 2011, 9:52am If you are scanning into PS you can first change the mode to Black and White and then play with brightness/contrast. Also, depending on the quality of your scanner, you can adjust how it scans it in? hope that helps
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Susan_142450

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Re: Scanning pencil art
Reply #4 - Jul 10^th, 2011, 10:06am

Some scanners give the option to scan bw or color. That said, if you are not given a choice, be sure to scan at a high dpi (300 or 600) and open in Photoshop or similar program.
Once there go to Image>Mode>Greyscale. That will make it a bw/grey image.
From there go to Image>Adjustments>Levels. This will bring up a Histogram. It basically tells you what tones are in your image. Move the right slider to the left and that will lighten your "white" background. The Left slider will darken your blacks and the middle will adjust the midtones. You'll need to experiment a bit to see what each will do and what's needed.
Once you have things the way you like them, you can convert back to RGB (and 300 dpi) for uploading to this site.

Hope this is helpful
S

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Sally_131513 Senior Member artist Posts: 422	Re: Scanning pencil art Reply #5 - Jul 10^th, 2011, 10:09am Ok i see. I will try that Susan. Thank you all tho! Much appreciation goes out to you all, Sal
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Terri_138640 Full Member artist Posts: 203	Re: Scanning pencil art Reply #6 - Jul 10^th, 2011, 10:39am You don't say what extension you are using. I used to find I couldn't scan in as a .jpg without everything coming out odd colored. I ended up scanning in as .tiff and changing it in whatever program I was using.
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Karen_150884 Full Member artist Posts: 149	Re: Scanning pencil art Reply #7 - Jul 10^th, 2011, 1:07pm Hi Sally, all my cards are pencil drawings and I find Photoshop does everything I need. (Sorry didn't catch if you use this?) Go to 'enhance' and you can get straight to 'black and white' pictures or you have a multiple useage in 'colour variations'. Good luck. Karen.
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Sally_131513 Senior Member artist Posts: 422	Re: Scanning pencil art Reply #8 - Jul 10^th, 2011, 1:24pm i do use ps4 so i will try all of that. all of my drawings except one so hope it helps. lol Sal
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Laura_142481

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Re: Scanning pencil art
Reply #9 - Jul 10^th, 2011, 4:08pm

You can actually do all your color correction and darkening the pencil w/o going to gray scale. All those options and more than you could ever dream of can be done to the colored image in Photoshop. I do it all the time. One less step to do. If a scanner isn't scanning as a jpeg, then you need to go into its settings and change it to do so, Terri. If the art is not color, Sal, always scan in gray scale. If you're scanning in color for b/w work, that may be where the pink is coming from. Hope that helps.

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Sally_131513

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Re: Scanning pencil art
Reply #10 - Jul 10^th, 2011, 5:22pm

no i scan in b/w for sure and about 600 dpi which would be for printing. i dont know what the deal is with the scanning of this one pic. its on the exact same paper and pencil. one prob. i am having now is i can't quite tell if the page is actually all white. i have retinopathy and i see yellow patches and the other junk . long story.

Sal

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Pris_142271

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Re: Scanning pencil art
Reply #11 - Jul 10^th, 2011, 9:31pm

I always scan my graphite drawings as "color." I think it comes closer to the true graphite color, which is not black. For my work, its the best option I've found. Always 600dpi too.

Even when doing charcoal drawings, I still scan as "color." B/W is fine for text, but it just doesn't seem to pick up the details as well.

Hopefully, this will help. Good luck!

Pris

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Judy_139270

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Re: Scanning pencil art
Reply #12 - Jul 11^th, 2011, 3:59pm

I am so glad I read this thread!

I nearly didn't because I don't do my card designs in pencil. But I do often draw little sketches in pencil for my blog, such as this one:

http://judyadamsonartanddesign.blogspot.com/2011/06/fish-out-of-water.html

And I can never get them to come out dark enough without darkening the background as well!

I use a very basic scanner and I use (free) paint.net to edit on my laptop (have photoshop on my pc but I mostly use my laptop for work) and by following Susan's instructions, the one I did today has come out beautifully! Cheesy

I'd never tried the 'levels' button before but it solved my problem - so thank you so much, Susan! (I'm afraid I can't show you the improved result here as it's for a blog post that will be published next week!)

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Susan_142450

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Re: Scanning pencil art
Reply #13 - Jul 11^th, 2011, 11:34pm

Quote from Judy_139270 on Jul 11^th, 2011, 3:59pm:

I am so glad I read this thread!

I nearly didn't because I don't do my card designs in pencil. But I do often draw little sketches in pencil for my blog, such as this one:

http://judyadamsonartanddesign.blogspot.com/2011/06/fish-out-of-water.html

And I can never get them to come out dark enough without darkening the background as well!

I use a very basic scanner and I use (free) paint.net to edit on my laptop (have photoshop on my pc but I mostly use my laptop for work) and by following Susan's instructions, the one I did today has come out beautifully! Cheesy

I'd never tried the 'levels' button before but it solved my problem - so thank you so much, Susan! (I'm afraid I can't show you the improved result here as it's for a blog post that will be published next week!)

You're welcome Judy!

As to the color cast - so many scanners are not calibrated well, so if you can only scan in color, that's going to show in your "bw" drawing. Though I agree there is often "color" in bw - notibly the true color of the paper - warm or cool - you will end up with less unpleasant surprises when converting to grey, etc.
Add to this the truth that most people's screens are not calibrated either - and they differ from brand to brand & year to year, old, new, etc., and you can end up with some disappointing surprises. Of course if you are lucky enough to like your results that's great too!
There are other tricks as well. Using Lab color is a great solution as well (I use it to repair really messed up images w/little or no contrast, or the improve quality when pressed into making large images of teeny low res ones), or converting to cmyk (I simply cannot color correct in rgb) and using Curves to pull down to a whiter page. Then convert back to RGB to post here or other places on the web.

Have a great evening/morning!

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