PHOTOSHOP

What's the best way to scan art?

There are 3 basic scanning choices. Full color, grayscale and line art. The other choices are 256 colors, OCR and Fax which I have never had a reason to use any of them.

Full color is used for photos, graphics and any art that has more than 1 color or is screened (like from a magazine). For best resolution the rule is to scan 100% size at 300 dpi. That means if you have a space that is 3 inches and your photo is 1 1/2 inches that you will need to scan your photo at 200% at 300 dpi or you can scan your photo at 600 dpi at 100%.

Grayscale is used when your art is black or has screens like from a black and white photo or a black and white graphic with screens. Grayscale should be scanned at 100% at 300 dpi also.

Line Art. Line art is everything solid color, like text or line drawings. Anything that has no screen. It does not have to be black it can be solid blue or red. Business cards are a good example of one or two colors. Line art is scanned at resolutions of 600 dpi at 100% and for art that is really small 1200 dpi at 100%.

A word about Line Art. Line art is solid pixels. Convert this to grayscale and then to RGB and...

How do you get colors to match?

Once your line art has been converted to RGB the art is black in all three channels. Pick a color that you would like to match. For the below example we have selected a color off the color palette of orange 246 Red 142 Green 85 Blue. Open your curve palette. Command M on the Mac, Control M on the PC. Shown below.

Turn your graph slider so that the black is on the bottom and the white toward the top like above. To do this select the arrows in the middle and it will toggle.

Select the Red Channel, place your mouse at the lower left corner of the graph and a box will open, type in the red value, select the Green, type in the green value, select the Blue, type in the blue value - and there is your matching color.

If you are used to using the paint bucket and filling the colors you will see that your orange fill is edged with black pixels around it. Keep your original scan and duplicate the process to get the colors that you want to work with. This principle also works with CMYK art.

If your art started as full color and not line art you can also use monotone to create a consistent color. You will need to convert your art to grayscale, then you can select monotone and type in the color value for your monotone. You can then change the color back to RGB if needed.

I see stray pixels in areas that are supposed to be white is there anyway I can get rid of that?

Yes. Open the curve palette. Select the pencil tool at the bottom, bring it to the top of the graph and slide it over one or two squares. How do I make the grid smaller? Option click Mac or Alt click PC in the middle of the graph.

How do you get photos inside of shapes?

Select the art that you would like to place into your shape. Copy the art into your clipboard. Command C on the Mac, Control C on the PC. Draw a shape or use the magic wand tool to select the area that you would like to place your art. Shift + Command + V on the Mac, Shift + Control + V on the PC and the art will fall inside of your selected area. If you have multiple areas that you want to select use the Quick Mask Mode.

What is a Gaussian blur and when should I use it?

A Gaussian blur is used for smoothing out edges and blending colors such as scans from a magazine or printed photo.

How do you edit photos to print well?

See How to Lighten Photos.

What is Hue and Saturation?

Hue and Saturation is a tremendous tool for adjusting your art. Simply pull the slider Hue for different colors, selecting the saturation to make more intense or less intense, Lightness reduces or darkens the color.