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SectionsPreparationsScanner Settings Scanning It In Adjusting Your Image Preparing Your Scan For Computer Coloring PreparationsIn order to scan your artwork into the computer, you need two things: a scanner and a paint program. For this demonstration, I am using a Paperport One Touch 5300 scanner and Paint Shop Pro 5. Naturally, the process varies depending on which paint program you use and which type of software your scanner uses, but it should be similar in principle to what I'm demonstrating.First make sure that your scanner is turned on and ready to use, and then start up your paint program. Make sure that your artwork in the scanner is lined up correctly and that the surface of the scanner is free of dust and smudges. Having a dirty scanner or improperly aligned artwork makes a scan turn out poorly. Next locate your paint program's import interface. This should be where your paint program can access the scanner. In my paint program, I go under "file" and look for "import", then choose "TWAIN" and "Acquire". This is what it looks like on my computer. Once again, this will vary depending on your paint program.
Scanner SettingsOnce you have accessed your scanner, a new dialogue box should pop up. What this control panel looks like varies, but here is what mine looks like. On your control panel, you may want to change your settings from the default. I set my scanner on "Custom" and leave it on color mode. I personally prefer to scan in all finished artwork at 200 or 300 dpi (dots per inch) so that I'll have a high resolution scan ready to use for prints and merchandise. I save that scan, then shrink down the image and save it under a different filename for use on the web. For general purposes I use 100 or 150 dpi. Although my printer can scan images from 75 to 2400 dpi, I think that works best in most cases. Scans at higher resolutions take much longer to finish scanning and take up a lot of memory unnecessarily, plus the finished scans are huge in size and filesize.
Scanning It InOnce I have adjusted my scanner's settings, I hit the "Preview" button to get a preliminary look at the image before I scan it. Once the image appears in my scan window, I click on the image area and use the dotted line to adjust the scan area. Once I have the image size where I want it, I hit the "Scan" button.
Adjusting Your ImageOnce I am finished scanning, I close the control panel and adjust the image. Here is what the image looks like right after it has been scanned in. The image is huge, the contrast is poor, and it needs to be cropped. Using my crop tool, I cut off the excess areas of the image. If needed, I adjust the image down to a more reasonable size. A finished image that is ready for web viewing should be between 375 and 600 pixels wide and preferably less than 800 pixels tall. If your image is any bigger than that, it will take a long time to download and view and cause browsers to scroll on monitors set in a lower resolution.
Preparing Your Scan For Computer ColoringPlease note that method that I have below (the paint bucket method) is an older method that I rarely use anymore. It only works on images that are black and white to begin with and causes a lot of unwanted pixilation. It's easier to simply adjust the levels of an image than to mess around with the paint bucket and the end result looks better. I play around with the gamma, brightness and contrast, hue/saturation/brightness, and highlight/midtone/shadow settings in my paint program until the image is optimized.The image that I scanned for this demonstration is a black and white image that I plan on computer coloring, so I leave the image size large for coloring, then adjust the contrast levels. In my paint program, to adjust contrast, I go under "Colors" and select "Adjust" and then select "Brightness/Contrast". This what it looks like in my paint program. It may be different in your paint program. At this point a new dialogue box should open that allows you to see preview your image before you adjust it. Here you can see the original image on the left and the adjusted image on the right. One I have the adjusted image where I like it, I press "OK". When I am done adjusting the brightness and contrast, the image is still not how I want it too look in terms of contrast. Setting the contrast too high in the dialogue box tends to degrade the sharpness of small lines, so instead of adjusting it again, I take my paint bucket and set one to black and one to white. Here is what selecting a color looks like in my paint program. Once I have my colors selected, I make sure that my bucket is set to "Solid Color" and then paint all the lines black and all of the spaces white. After I am done with my paint bucket, there are usually still small patches of off colored pixels in the image. To see what I mean, click here. To fix these, I take my retouch tool and set it to "Push" with the brush size set to one pixel on maximum hardness and density, then I fill in all of the off pixels. Once I am done, my black and white image is ready to be computer colored. Here is what the final cleaned up image looks like.
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