Tips on making artworks look more professional?

Yan

New Member
Hi all,

I work mainly with watercolor, guache, and sometimes oil/acrylic. Whenever I transfer my art to computer they always look sloppy; (noise, colour distortion, texture of paper/paint visible, fuzzy edges when zoomed in).

Does anyone have tips on how to make artworks more professional looking and ready for print, maybe better ways to scan, photoshop tricks etc?

Thank you!
 
It's best to photograph them and produce a transparent negative slide.

These can then be attached to a drum scanner that is better for scanning.
 
transparent negative slide.

careful, you'll confuse people... slide film doesn't do negatives, it does positives so when you shine light through it's the right colours, usually supplied in a plastic frame ready for the projector.
Negatives come from 'normal' film where as the name implies is the negative of the image you've taken and is usually supplied in strips.

Yan, these are both done via old school film photography, ideally you'd use large format or medium format cameras and film allowing for more 'image' when scanning compared with 35mm film.

Having said that however, how are you currently importing the images, a decent digital camera with high resolution should give just as good results as a scanned in film/slide. What sort of size are your images, you might be better getting a large format (a3) scanner for example. Without knowing your current approach we can't really make too many suggestions.
 
My works are mostly within A4 size and I use my all-in-one printer to scan them. For larger works I get them scanned at the local print shop.

I've never tried using a camera as I thought it would distort the image, I guess I could try using it with a tripod?
 
Yes, you would need a tripod and cable release ideally and even lighting on either side, any distortion can be altered in Photoshop etc.

You also need to check your settings on your scanner to get a higher resolution maybe and make sure your paintings are completely flat on the bed.
You might be better off buying a better scanner, not sure how good these all-in-ones are. Don't forget that any textures etc on the surface will be
enhanced by the scanner, so photography might be your best option.
 
Yes, you would need a tripod and cable release ideally and even lighting on either side, any distortion can be altered in Photoshop etc.
You could use the timer which is on some camera's too.

As said dual light set up, diffused lighting (behind a filter or bounced back) rather than direct imo so the lighting is softer along with a tripod and timer/remote trigger/cable release.

I would probably use a 50mm lens if using a 35mm camera (or full frame digital slr such as nikon f800 with its 'FX' sensor) or equivalent lens for the non full frame digital cameras (such as nikon 3400 with it's 'DX' sensor). I believe the 28 or 35mm is roughly equal to a 50mm lens of a full frame sensor.

Reason for 50mm is that the lens is seen by most as the closest to the what the eye sees and as such has the least distortion. 90mm (full frame) lens is another alternative but it might have a small amount of distortion. Both 50mm and 90mm usually have macro versions although a set of extender tubes can likely do the same job if you don't have access to them.


You say your work is A4 so you can likely scan it, you'll likely need to go higher resolution and then tweak in photoshop to fix the stuff you don't like, most all in ones do 600x600 as standard resolution iirc, some do higher but you'll need to dig into the settings. It's the same with a camera too, the higher the pixels the more detail it captures so more of the 'character' of the medium will be caught.
 
Would you consider the best DPI while scanning? or you could try some movies on YouTube, Especially I like to recommend the Mark Haglund.
 
Scanning is best done to scan to the size you want it printed at, and the right resolution for printing.

Different printing methods have different resolution requirements.
 
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