Peter Williams 16 Oct 2008

Hi Holly. A good question! I'm no expert but I'll give you my thoughts. Getting the prints made is the easy part, there are many, many companies which will produce high quality giclees etc. from your images supplied on CD at a very reasonable price. But the prints can only ever be as good as the image you supply to them. If like me you can't afford to employ a professional photographer to shhot your images, then you'll have to take your own. So, if you have a decent digital camara, shoot your picture on maximum resolution setting outside on a reasonably bright day. Not in direct sun as the light will reflect back from your pencil marks. Don't use a flash. Use a tripod for your camara and use the timer setting to avoid any camara shake. Get close enough in to fill the frame as best you can. Once you have your shots, download them to your computer as TIFF files if you can. The reason for this is that if you have JPEG files, each time they are saved after subsequent editing they will be compressed somewhat and you will lose some of the resolution, whereas a TIFF file will not be compressed and will remain a large file which you eventually keep as your master copy. Once you have your TIFF file on your computer you can edit with whatever software is on your computer (I have Photoshop Elements which works for me) You need to straighten and crop your image. Then REMOVE COLOUR to give a true black and white image. Then using the brightness and contrast controls get the whites as white as you can and the darks as near to how you want them as you can. Then a little sharpening using the UNSHARP MASK tool. This should leave you with a fairly clean image which you can copy to a CD and send in to the printer of your choice. Here in the UK I use Intelligence Direct.com or Cypher Digital.com (google them) but you should easily find a company that suits you. If you can't get a decent photo of your work, then the second best choice is to scan the image. I only have an A4 scanner so this usually entails stitching several scans together on the computer before I have the TIFF file ready. The problem with the scans is that sometimes the pencil darks will reflect the light back giving a 'sparkly' effect which is difficult to get rid of. Once you have your master file you can copy it as a JPEG and re-size as many times as you like for uploading to the web etc., but keep a copy of your masterfile and keep another copy of it on CD for safety as a backup. I'm sure other more expert photographers (Leigh?) will be able to give other tips which I'd be interested to read too.

Nicole Viste 04 Nov 2008

I had the same problem getting prints made of my own drawings, either my dark detail was smudged or my light detail totally vanished, but I have been very happy with the results of getting Giclee (fancy word for high-quality ink-jet prints) prints made, although the costs to get these prints made are alot higher than the tradition print methods. Hope this helps you!

Dominic Melfi 05 Nov 2008

Holly

Your best bet is to have a high resolution scanner, and scan it specifically for the size print you want to make, at about 240 pixels per inch.

Be careful to make sure it is apx 240 and also print at 240.

The problem with pencil shading is that paper has a grain, this grain can result in a dot-dot issue during scanning OR PRINTING. That is what appears gray is really a series of paper grain of raised grain=black and recessed grain=white. The pencil really has only one color lead(right?) so grey is an illusion.

Scanning at different resolutions as an experiment will get you some data for each type of grain paper you use.

If you scanned at 500 pixels then printed at 240 you would loose over 1/2 the data, if the dot-dot black versus white gets out of sync it will wash out totally.

CAUTION:

These are 2 measurements Dots Per Inch often used by Scanners and Printers and PIXELS per inch.

SCANNING: Test wether your scanner works better set to color or gray scale on your drawings.

Dots per inch represent a color sampler(Scanner) or a color reproduction(printer). A scanner may take 10 color samples to produce one pixel. This is then translated to a 24-32 bit color code. You might get a grey, black, or white pixel resulting from scanning a 8x8 adjacent DOT area, so 64 dots are translated to 1 Pixel, because picels are the computer storage not dots.

PRINTING:

The PIXEL is now translated to a color matrix for the printer perhaps 8x8 dots, it has no knowledge of the original 8x8 dots scanned, at this point. Depending on the translation chosen to print within your driver (saturation, screen translation etc) you will reproduce either a black, white, gray PIXEL which may or may not be the save as the original dots scanned.

CAUTION:

Never put a black and white drawing into a JPG file. JPEG will create a further "averaging" of color, which is how JPG condenses. It will sample perhaps an 8x8 pixel area and average the color which again may be different shade of grey than your original pictures so you have altered a 64x64 dot scan so it is the same colored area, thus loosing any fine texture.

SUMMARY:

If these translations in and out and in JPG condensing get into a certain "rythym" you can entirely wash out an area of your drawing.

IF YOU ARE SERIOUS ABOUT THIS:

Tke different grain papers and small test shadings of different darkness on same sample and try matching scanning and printing at different resolutions, NO JPG, I would guess different papers with different pencils will work better at different settings. (The way pencils work is a fine pencil is harder and puts smaller color patterns on paper, a soft pencil puts larger lead grain dots on paper) Then you can develope a chart for printing different type sketches thru the scan/printing process.

GICLEE

This is just another word for matrix printing and has nothing to do with the actual process. It was invented as a term to give more "pizazz" to prints but dosnt represent any technology that is different. Certain aspects of matrix printing do effect color, but most of this dosnt apply to black and white anyway. (such as how many colored inks, my printer uses 8 ink cartridges)

Dominic Melfi 07 Nov 2008

used word matrix, should be inkjet

Holly Ertter 11 Nov 2008

Hello Dominic! Your advice and detailed knowledge is much appreciated! Sounds like I need to go shopping for a good scanner. Many thanks!

vivian sellers 15 Nov 2008

I use a small family owned printer who works hard to please and has only higheset quality products it is called Enterprise Printing and is at [email protected] the contact name is Kathy and they do archival inks ,,somerset velvet paper or canvas ..they coat the prints with u.v. on the canvas prints and the prints are good for like 100 years,,,they work hard to please and will drop ship and are honest!!! I love them they do all my printing...they do brochures and everything!

Holly Ertter 17 Nov 2008

Thanks very muich Vivian for your recommendation! I really appreciate it! Maybe I will try them out. They sound really great, no wonder you stick with them!! :-)

Roz Eve 20 Nov 2008

If you have ever considered photoing your art instead of scanning then check out what we went through. You might want to reconsider.

We do things a bit differently. We bought $1,000.00 special daylight watt bulbs (professional ) and set up a room to photo my art. ANY..... other bulbs have color and changes the color of your painting we tried every cheaper bulb we could buy.

We tried for months to sort out the glare problems, not using glare lenses which have their own issues. we bought a camera and had to upgrade to a ten mega pixel camera to get the correct amount of detail for a decent size print (decent being bigger than 8x10) we bought booksss on photography how too. when these books still didn't provide answers to all the glare and light distribution problems. we used umbrellas etc. the huge store in toronto (the go to place for professionals)recommended etc. Then finaly figured out our own secret way of doing it that no book mentioned..

We then tried to start a printing business photoing the art, making portfollios, and color photo business cards. WE bought an eight thousand dollar printer just before the technology changed so then bought a better printer for less money recently for $3,000.00 which are the archival inks and museum quaiity paper giclee' we have now. My husband couldn't find a book to adequetly explain the color fix or color match process so he learned for himself to figure it out (its an art in itself).

Then we bought a profesional spider (profesional one not the cheap one) to match your computer screen to your printer so the color you see on the screen is the color your printer prints. The settings have to be redone often as the computer screen shifts color gradually. Thats how I got the quality prints we have that we took to the world fantasy convention at the end of oct.

YES I WAS JURIED IN YEAH !!!!!!!!! I'm listed there under the artists page and they have a link to my site.

You need the plastic sealer and poly bags as well to protect your prints.

We gave up on the print business because after investing all that year of time and money,we tried to market our service and quickly discovered if you don't have a business location the artists are not interested even when they like the price.. they loved the prints and business cards but turned off instantly when we said we do it from home.

So I can see why the scan method is so popular especially considering the costs of what we have invested. However you still have to learn to color fix with the scanner depending on the color shade of your glass on the scanner. it losses detail if it isn't a good one etc.

However, product shots like my masks with such amazing texture, and beads, and my amber and gold layer jewelry I make come up awesome we don't get shadows or have any of the three dimensional problems of textured paint, with paintings, that scanning has. We just kept solving problems as we went along more than i've mentioned.

We love the canvas prints that we get with our printer. its an epson stylus pro 4880 and it does take up a sizeable amount of room.

i hope i have not bored any one with too much information. At least you will know a little more of what your choice means. we had no idea or we would never have done it. But we had to have the best. I guess you have to decide your investment level.

Linda Eades Blackburn 20 Nov 2008

Roz, I just don't have that kind of patience nor do I want to be a printer......... I take a lot of my own photos, but some things I can't seem to get right, so for $100 I send them to my printer that I use for larger prints, and he shoots the work with a digital back camera. He only charges $100 for these scans up to 4 feet, then $175 for works larger than 4 feet. You have to pay $25 for having it put on a DVD. I can then print them out on my Epson 7000. I bought it used from a printer that did work for my husband. $500. Great prints.

Larger prints I have done on a print to order basis.

I don't use those expensive lights that you purchased to shoot my work, but just regular photo floods, then adjust the color in Photoshop CS2. Better yet, I shoot outside in bright shade whenever possible.

Roz Eve 21 Nov 2008

it is very true the next best to the professional daylight watt bulbs is outdoor in the shade on a really bright cloudy day.

I am not suggesting any one become a printer. Sorry if any one misunderstood. I was suggesting that scanning was a much less costly method. i was speaking of the money I wasted because the technology changes so rapidly and all the work and problem solving we found we wasted so very much time on. i also understand we all do not have the same resources, Its wonderful if you can find a way that is less costly. I hope the info i have given on the losses we had will keep others from throwing away their money. We paid dearly for our wrong choices with a year of our life and allot of money and that business having failed cost our other business's dearly.

For anyone thinking of investing in a spider we found it was not wanting to sit flat on the screen which creates problems with it reading the colors so be careful of that it will save you the problems we had.

Also if you are familiar Rowena Morrill, she uses a scanner to scan her work as well. My husband and i discussed it with her at the Dragon Convention in Atlanta a few years ago when she was looking over my portfollio. Todd Lockwood also scans his work as well and loves to use Corel painter for his digital painting needs. I have great respect for their art work.

We have CS3 but we have found that nothing gives the color fixing accuracy of doing it yourself its worth learning to do it. Like i said it is an art form if you do it well.We do it in a different way as well and will keep our method to ourself. I wish you all well and that you make wiser easier choices than us with your time and money.

Roz Eve 21 Nov 2008

Todd and Roweena mentioned above are professional fantasy book cover artists and scanning is the method they choose.

Linda Eades Blackburn 21 Nov 2008

Roz, I really wasn't criticizing your post, sorry if it came off like that. I think it's great that you shared this here, it really may help some people from making the same mistakes.

I was just telling everyone what I personally do.

Also Shooting art with a digital backed camera is also called scanning. That is the method that my printer uses. I used to think that the term scan was only applied to flat bed scanners or the like. Digital backed cameras are for shooting things that cannot move. Only. And they have much higher resolution than cameras that we use. Much, much higher.

I keep throwing that thing about not wanting to be a printer in, because Artists are always bugging me about printing for them. As you know, it is time consuming and not something that I enjoy. It take a good bit of time to get everything right and ready for printing and I have actually had some people get mad because I would not print for them.

I do like having the ability to print my work when I choose to.

Roz Eve 21 Nov 2008

Linda thanks for the clarification and the info about the scanning. You have me intrigued to look into it.

Holly Ertter 11 Dec 2008

Thanks for the information Roz & Linda! You both have some good information for me. I don't have all of the pricey equipment yet or lots of time to devote to do this myself. I'm really looking for a good company that I can pay to do it for me. I truly appreciate your replies here ladies!! :-)

Dominic Melfi 13 Dec 2008

Just a mention, your original black and white drawing question is different from a color print, even tho a color print might look different it might actually look nice even tho colors are not exactly matching, or lighting seems differnt. A pencil sketch is different, it seldom looks good when information is dropped or distorted, particularily when the shading is washed out or filled in. My lengthly comment was intended only for pencil sketch issues. Almost any scanner or good digital photo will produce an appealing image of a colored piece, tho it might not meet the artists expectations, the viewer wouldnt have that incite. A washed out or filled in pencil sketch just looks inferior to everyone. Plus there are many ways to adjust a color piece in photo programs, but no real way to recover shading textures etc.

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