basic question: scanning pencil sketches

[maxman137]

Typically whenever I scan a pencil sketched image I scan it in as a grayscale. The color of the paper then generally doesn't interfere as much with the actual drawing later on should you decide to tweak the levels in the image to bring up a little bit of contrast, as you professed to be a light drawer. As for DPI, I rarely go over 300, but it all depends what you're using it for. My advice would be to just scan it in at whatever max resolution you think you'll use, and take it down a couple of notches in PS if need be.

[Turbonium]

I did it at 600 DPI at grayscale, but lots of the details still don't show up (the very light lines), even if I play with the histogram prior to scanning.

Really quite annoying, I don't know how to fix this.

[Turbonium]

I'm redoing the scan at 300 DPI as I type... 600 DPI just takes too long for the CPU to crunch through.

Which yields better results for something like this? Scanning at 600DPI then resizing it to half, or scanning at 300DPI and not resizing it?

EDIT: I have another newbee question: how the heck am I supposed to colour this thing? What I tried doing is pasting the file as a new layer, magic wanding the white stuff with 0 tolerance, no contiguity or AA, and deleted, but it's crude and you still get little bits of off-white near the edges of the lines that shouldn't be there.

I know I'm doing it wrong... what's the way to do this properly?

[jcbray]

add a higher tolerance if your missing out on some of it, it will select a wider variety of colours, the higher the tolerance, the higher the variety.

[Turbonium]

Isn't there a better way to do it though?

[chrisdejoya]

300 dpi should do ya fine. I scan at grayscale if on white paper.

Listen to maxman, once you get the picture in Photoshop, tweak the levels (ctrl-l) and bring out as much outline and retain as much whiteness as you need.

The lasso method is no good for rough pencil sketches. You'll want to set the layer settings to Multiply and paint under that. Take note your colors may come out darker if your sketch layer isn't at full white. It depends on your coloring style, I like to place another layer on top of the outlines to paint on highlights.

Here's a tut I wrote demonstrating my process...

http://www.3dpinoy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1829

Mail me if you want to the entire character, I saves step by step images.

[Turbonium]

Wow I have LOTS to learn and LOTS of experience to get doing this.

If I could paint like the guy in that tutorial I'd be happy.

Thanks btw.

haha just realized it's your own tutorial... respect.

[Turbonium]

Here's a link (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v493/photohub/newb_painting.jpg) to what I've done so far (I'm slow). I have no clue where to go from there, pretty much.

My reference image is here (http://worldofwarcraft.com/downloads/wallpapers/wallpaper23.html). I don't expect amazing results like that though (it's a 3d render obviously, etc.), but I'm using it as a reference for colouring and shading...

Showing you the above to give you a general idea of what I'm trying to pull off.. and my current level of skill.

[tamayoduck]

What I usually do (and am slowly getting better at) is to do a lineover of your original drawing. This can help you also sketch in the parts that didn't show up so well on your scan.

Basically I just make another transparent layer over top of the scan, and then use bezier lines to go over the lines on your scan. Then, when you're done, take away the scan underneath and you have a transparent line drawing that you can begin to color using layering techniques.

Also, if you want to keep the sketched look, instead of using bezier curves, just use the paintbrush by hand. This is kind of a weird way of tracing in photoshop, but it works for us beginners.

Good luck!

[Garma]

the fact that you can't see some light lines has not much to do with the dpi. Dpi is your resolution, not the scale of color variations which your scanner can "see". If you want those lines to show up, a better scanner is your answer. However it can also be the case that your scanner does detect them but that you cannot view them due to monitor settings (the difference between 255 and 254 is not visible on most monitors) playing around with levels in photoshop might help.

for the color/gray scale thing: I'd go color. I can't hardly imagine a pencil sketch is pure grayscale, and you can desaturate any time you want

just my 2c :thumbsup:

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