Scanning line art

[Ben X]

I'm planning to scan a load of old comics Dan Marshall and I drew, for posterity, and also to clean one of them up into a more Scott Pilgrim style. The trouble is, I don't know what the best scan settings are to use. They're mainly drawn with regular fineline pens, and I only really need good enough quality to print them out 1:1 on A4 sheets if needs be. I started out with really high settings and of course the files all come out at huge sizes, around 13000 pixels long and about 50Mb. But I'm not sure how low I can go without losing detail.

 

Any recommendations?

 

Have attached a before and after shot.

IS001oldcrop.bmp

[dibs]

Thanks for reminding me busted existed:(

[melmer]

welcome to loserville!

Whatever happened to the little one...

WHERE CAN I BUY THIS ALBUM!!!!

[syntheticgerbil]

Are you scanning these with just black and white settings because they look kind of digitally eaten at? I'd recommend scanning them in grayscale and probably in no more than 600 dpi (or maybe just 300 dpi since the paper size doesn't sound too big), then just playing with the levels until you get clear blacks and whites and cleaning up any stray spots bit by bit. Maybe that's of some help?

[Dewar]

Optimally, you want to scan and edit them as large as possible, then compress after for web display.

[UltimateHurl]

I used to do some scanning, but mainly work digitally now, because I can see all the imperfections when I scan. From memory 300dpi is probably optimal, should leave you with a file about a 10th the size. You can also take the scanned image into photoshop after scanning and tweak the levels to make the line-art look cleaner. 

[Ben X]

Okay, thanks guys. I'm using Paintshop as that's all I have. If I scan in greyscale at 300, which levels should I play with to get it clear?

Ooh, and is it worth doing .pngs rather than .bmps to save space?

[brkl]

Just use the Levels tool to alter the white-point and black-point. Probably.

[Ben X]

Thanks! Edited previous post with file type question also...

[toblix]

Yes, use PNG instead of BMP.

[syntheticgerbil]

I always have a hell of a time getting something to easily open a bitmap these days.

[elmuerte]

bitmap isn't easy; it's backwards, the last line is first in the file.

[Ben X]

I'm not doing too well using the levels to get it down to black and white from greyscale, so I might continue with scanning in b&w then just tidy up manually.

Optimally, you want to scan and edit them as large as possible, then compress after for web display.

Any recommendations for best way to compress the massive ones I've already done without losing line quality?

Thanks everyone...

[BigJKO]

I'm not doing too well using the levels to get it down to black and white from greyscale

Can you take us through what you're doing with the Levels tool? Maybe then we can figure out what you're doing wrong. There should be a spike in the histogram data in the Levels tool, that you need to then drag the black and white handles towards until you get a satisfying amount of contrast. Don't overdo it, because them you eat away at the lines.

(Actually, maybe the white handle has to be dragged past the big spike in the histogram.. To ensure that the page is completely white. I'm not in front of a computer, so I don't remember)

[syntheticgerbil]

What does the levels tool look like on Paintshop?

[BigJKO]

Oh, didn't see you were using Paintshop.. But the Levels tool can't be too dissimilar?

[Ben X]

What does the levels tool look like on Paintshop?

 

 

So I use the pipette to choose the colour that I want to go to the "desired" black, grey and white. The thing is, I want my 'special edition' version to be two-colour, not greytone, and the inking on the original was not done carefully or professionally, so I may not have much choice about at some point having to go to a patchy two-colour version and tidying it up a lot...

 

What's more, this is not for public consumption, it's just something we did panel by panel taking turns with a 50p pen on the kitchen table, full of in-jokes and blue material. So it doesn't have to be super-polished, just as easy as possible and the smallest size possible without losing any quality from an A4 page of scribbles. 

[MrHoatzin]

Have you tried blurring everything just a shade, then using the levels to pen in the grays on either extreme?

[Ben X]

Wah?

[syntheticgerbil]

I did this really quick in Photoshop with the levels tool as I think the one Paintshop uses somehow doesn't retain the image quality as well from what I'm seeing, although it doesn't look too different.It's still in greyscale though. I think what is happening because you are saving it as a black and white image, which Photoshop apparently doesn't allow me to do, that is where your main image deterioration is coming from, so probably what you have is about as good as it's going to get since the only colors available are 100% black and 100% white.

[Brannigan]

That levels tool in paintshop looks atrocious anyway, holy crap.

[Ben X]

Ha ha, yeah, it's a pretty old version, I don't really need to splurge out a load of money on anything better.

 

Synth, looks like you managed to avoid a lot of the digital spottiness there. Hmm...

[brkl]

Try GIMP.

[osmosisch]

Ben, Adobe CS2 is available for free and should fill your needs:

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=cs2_downloads

 

It let me do this in 5 seconds of fiddling:

[Roderick]

I didn't know Adobe gave away CS2 for free, that's really good! What an excellent thing of them to do.