| Step 1:
Turn on the scanner and place the drawing inside (which in my
case involves unburying the scanner).
If there are other drawings on the page following the one you're
scanning and the paper you're using isn't very thick I
suggest putting a page or two of blank printer paper in between
so the scanner doesn't pick up any ghost images of the drawings
you don't want to scan. |
| Step 2:
You can do one of two things next, open the scanning program
itself or open a graphics program and import the drawing into
it. I prefer to do the latter and the rest of this
tutorial will follow the importing course of action. The program
I'll be using is Photoshop 7.0. |
Step 3:
With Photoshop (or a similar program) open go to File >> Import
>> and then select your scanner from the list.
 |
Step 4:
This is the default window that pops up when I scan.
The window that pops up for you may not look exactly like this,
but it should be close. As you may notice it defaults to simple
mode, but I want advanced mode. Advanced mode button click! |
Step 5:
Don't worry about messing with any settings right away. Hit
preview to see where your drawing is going to end up in the
scanning field.
 |
Step 6:
Now it's time to mess with some of the settings. The main ones
you'll want to make sure you have right are "Color Mode" and
"Output Resolution (dpi)". Since you're scanning line-art you'll
either want to set the color mode to "black and white" or
"grayscale". I'll show you how to do both.
Black and White: After you've selected this color mode you'll
need to go to the halftone tab and adjust the threshold slider so that the
lines in the preview are how you want them.
If the program
you're using doesn't have a halftone tab it should have some
kind of similar adjustments you can make for what the scanner is
going to recognize as black and white. Here's an example of
something scanned in black and white mode:
It's possible to get the same outcome with a better control over
the threshold by scanning in grayscale and using Photoshop. In
Step 9 where I talk about editing a grayscale image in I'll talk
about.
Grayscale: After you've selected this mode you don't have to
mess with any of the settings for it if you don't want to, but I
prefer to deviate a bit from what the program defaults to. The settings for this mode are in the "color" tab
(previously dressed in "halftone" garb).
My program automatically creates some auto levels for brightness
and contrast. I like to reset these and modify the levels of the
image later in Photoshop. More on that in Step 9.
It's up to you which mode you'd like to use. I suggest trying
both and getting used to what they can both do. |
Step 7:
After you've got the mode taken care of it's time to set the
DPI.
My program defaults to 400. The one for my old scanner
defaulted to 300. Either one of these works fine. Basically the
higher the DPI the larger the scanned image will be in terms of
file size. Increasing
the DPI only directly affects the size in terms of pixels on
your screen and not how large it will print. I highly recommend
reading my "Images for the web vs. print" tutorial to
get a better idea of what DPI to use depending on what you want
to do with the image. A general rule is that it's always easier
to make an image smaller than it is larger, though, so when in
doubt scan large. |
| Step 8:
With the color mode and the dpi set make sure the area you want
to scan is selected in the preview window and hit the scan
button. |
Step 9:
If you scanned the image in black and white mode ignore this
step. If you scanned it in
grayscale here're a couple ways to get your blacks black and your
whites white and remove ugly grass stains....okay, the grass
stains thing isn't true, but that blacks and whites part sounded
like a detergent ad to me....Anywho,
Before any editing:
Way 1: Go to Image >> Adjustments >> Levels (keyboard
shortcut Ctrl+L)
Up will pop a little window that shows a graph of the amounts of
different shades on your image, from black on the left to white
on the right. There are also three little sliders under the
graph. Click the black one on the left and drag it a bit to the
right. Notice some of the lines in your drawing get darker?
That's because you told it to set all the shades of that color
of grey and anything darker to black. The middle, grey slider
sets what the grey levels are and the white one sets the what
white is. Move them around until you like how the image looks
and then click "OK". Generally you'll want to move the black and
grey sliders to the right and the white one a little bit to the
left, but each image is different.
After:
Way 2: Go to Image >> Adjustments >> Threshold
The controls for this are very simple. Make sure you have the
preview box checked and drag the slider from left to right until
you like the way the image looks. Unlike with the preview window
when scanning this method for making everything in the image
either black or white gives you a much better idea of what the
outcome will be. You can zoom in and out at will and see exactly
what the final product will be.
After:
 |
Step 10:
Clean up the line-art a little bit if you'd like to, filling in
any areas of black that you'd like to be white or any areas of
white that you'd like to be black. I suggest using the pencil
tool if you scanned in black and white mode or adjusted the
threshold in Photoshop and the brush tool
if you scanned in grayscale.
Voila! Lines ready to be colored. |