How to Scan My Inked Comic Art for Coloring

Okay so let's get this part out of the way. I admire and respect digital artists, but for me there is goose egg better than drawing and inking my comics on trade and truthful bristol paper. Every artist is unlike so if this isn't your thing that'south cool, just this post is probably non for you lot. Simply if you're like me, and y'all like drawing traditionally, then at some indicate you're going to need to scan in your comic fine art and become information technology prepare for print and or coloring. Luckily I have a few handy tips to become you ready and doing merely that. Now to be clear I use Adobe products for most all of my resizing/digitizing needs and then bear that in mind. However many of these tips should work with merely about any decent photo manipulation package.

Earlier yous Scan…

If you have a flat piece of comic art and yous don't have access to some serious photography equipment y'all're going to have to browse your fine art. Your ultimate goal is to have your comic art scanned in at at least 300dpi print size. Expect, stop… I know, I know.. I'm already using words like dpi and impress size.. what does it all mean. Okay allow's interruption it downwards.

What is dpi? DPI stands for dots per inch. A printer prints in tiny dots. The more dots per inch the crisper the image. A high resolution image therefore has more dots per inch. A depression resolution has less. Just bear in mind you can always lower the resolution of an paradigm but you cannot increase the resolution and make an epitome crisper. It'southward a one fashion street.

What is print size? Print size is the size something volition print. If we scan comic art at 11×17 and desire it to print half size the print size would be 5.5 10 viii.5. The print size is the Final size of your printed product.

So how do these ii work together? Well let's say y'all scanned your comic art in at eight.5×eleven but scanned it at 72 dpi. If you try to print that, it volition impress at the correct size only the wrong resolution. Information technology volition look fuzzy and pixelated. Why? Well because 72 dpi looks great on screen but information technology's horrible in print. It's what monitors are designed for. Printing 72 dots per inch on paper just isn't enough. To become nice well-baked lines and art you have to print at 300 dpi. So for that same 8.5×11 certificate to print correctly it needs to be scanned in at viii.v×11 at 300 dpi.

Well if 300 dpi is bully for printing my comic art what if I scanned at 400 dpi, or 600 dpi? Hey expect. If yous want to scan at higher dpi yous are more than welcome. But here is why I don't.

It increases your file sizes and takes up infinite.
Information technology slows down your figurer and makes coloring harder if y'all aren't using a super fast computer.
Quite frankly it's unnecessary. About offset printers tin can't print more than than 300 dpi. So why put yourself through fine art headache.
Now that isn't to say that there aren't advantages sometimes. For case if yous know a slice might be printed larger downwardly the road (for a poster or something similar) and so planning ahead might be good. But I rarely find that is the case. And for large usages such as outdoor billboards or banners that are meant to be seen far away the resolution requirements actually go down. Because the artwork is meant to be seen at a altitude typically billboards and the similar accept much lower resolution requirements since the heart sees those images at a distance as being sharper.

Any scanner/scanning software will accept an option to choose your dpi when you scan. Unless you are scanning something specifically for web or to exist seen on screen, then I recommend e'er scanning at least 300dpi. After all you tin always reduce the size of something in regards to dpi just never can y'all upscale information technology.

Impress size is different than dpi but also dependent on it. Print size is basically the size that yous desire something to impress your comic art at. For instance if you lot desire your comic art to print on a standard piece of letter paper, then it's print size is going to take to be close to 8.v×11.

Here is a handy guide to resolution –
Press – 300dpi or above.
Web and screen viewing but – 72dpi[/one_half]

Scanning comic fine art.

Okay and then hopefully we've got a handle on the nuts of scanning comic fine art. Allow's talk about some of the issues yous'll encounter. Near comic art is drawn on 11×17 boards. The typical art size on those boards differs slightly depending on the template y'all utilise or per publisher but they are more often than not set at about 10×15 size. Within that 10×15 size yous have near a quarter of an inch on all sides of drain. But to scan that we'll demand a scanner that can adapt an eleven×17 lath. Merely…

The problem with this is that virtually people don't have an 11×17 scanner. So we basically have iii options.

• Draw smaller (Say on eight.five×xi boards instead)
• Scan your page in pieces and stitch them together in photoshop
• Find a scanning service that volition accommodate 11×17

  At present I'grand non going to show you lot how to scan them in pieces if you determine to go that route, every bit

1. It would be a web log unto itself and

2. Information technology really compromises quality.

Particularly with some scanners information technology can crusade so many headaches. So my recommendation is to either draw smaller or detect the scanning service. Most Staples and Part Depot stores tin can scan 11×17 for you. Information technology may toll per scan but if you batch scan (a set of pages all at one time) you lot can get the scanning done much faster. Either that or find someone with a scanner that can accommodate 11×17.

But regardless how you proceed I recommend y'all scan your comic art IN RGB Full Colour at

xi×17 at 300 dpi (RGB full colour)

or

8.5×xi at 300 dpi. (RGB full color)

Usually i scan at the former just because information technology'due south easier. All I have to do is select my page in my scanning software and my resolution is past default set to 300 every time. You tin e'er change the resolution later for whatever resolution you lot demand.

Things that are of import when scanning.

Color – I ever scan my comic art in colour

Resolution – I e'er scan at 300 dpi

Format – I always scan equally tif (tif compression is lossless, significant it doesn't lose data like a jpeg will)

Paradigm Correction – I usually choose none every bit I arrange in photoshop, which gives me more command

Getting rid of those blueish lines and cleaning up the blacks…

At this point we've got our artwork scanned and we're ready to practice the muddied work. We're going to get rid of the pesky bluish lines from both the comic board template and from whatsoever blueish pencils nosotros might have used. We're likewise going to clean up those blacks and brand sure everything looks expert. When you're done with this step you should accept nice looking blackness and white line art that is either set up for print equally is or ready to send to a colorist.

To the right you lot will see the scanned comic art before it has been adapted.

Experience free to click on the image to make it bigger and yous volition see:

• The brush strokes of the the ink.
• The ink isn't 100% black.
• In some areas you see the blueish pencils that weren't erased fully yet show.
• Likewise this is one image with white and black and putting colors behind the line art would be hard.

Don't worry. I'k going to show yous how to gear up all that in several piece of cake steps.

Blue Lines, Blue Lines Everywhere!!!

I, similar a lot of comic book artists, employ blueish pencils or blue line pencils when I draw comic art. Besides almost every comic template yous find uses a blue line template to betoken things like folio border, trim marks, bleeds, and sometimes the live area of the comic. We evidently don't want that to show upward in our ready to impress comic art and then I'll evidence yous how to get rid of those pesky bluish lines.

The key to doing this is working in channels. If yous scanned in RGB you're adept. If you scanned in CMYK brand sure you convert to RGB for this to work.

First become to the channels palette and click on the blue aqueduct. You'll notice in the chief art frame the artwork will turn black and white and any blueish lines that were in your artwork suddenly disappear. This is but showing yous the part of the artwork that is on the blueish channel. Select All (Control – A on mac) and Copy (Command – C) this channel.

Next click on the Green channel. You'll find the artwork once more is blackness and white but all the blue lines from the original comic art start showing upwardly are black and white and the artwork looks kind of messy. This time Select All (Command – A on mac) once more and this Paste Special (Shift Control – V). This will paste your bluish channel into your green channel.

Same thing for the Red Channel. Click on the Red Aqueduct and select all, then paste special. Once you've done this click on the RGB aqueduct yous should accept nice clean black and white comic fine art with all your bluish lines gone.

Darken It Up!

Now we are going to brand the line art look nice and blackness. Let's get to the Curves menu: Prototype > Adjustments > Curves or Command-M on a mac. Next Move the command point at the lesser left of the graph most one/2 to the right. And so move the control indicate at the top right of the graph about 1/four to the left. Hit okay.

And at present your artwork is nice and black. You should and then have squeamish clean artwork.

You can fiddle with the Curves if it's even so not clean enough or if for some reason y'all still see any pesky light greyness lines. But this should exercise the trick. At this point you tin can salve your file and send it on to your colorist or switch it to Greyscale if you intend on printing your book black and white.

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Source: https://www.matthewchilders.com/prepping-comic-art/

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