How to Scan In a Painting

When I'm at art shows, I have a lot of other artists ask me who makes my prints, how do I make the prints, etc. etc. Answer is that I do about 95% of it myself.
Here's step 1 of the "how do you make prints??" process.

Why scan? Most professionals would mount the painting on a wall or large easel and take a VERY high resolution digital photo. I haven't found much consistency doing that myself, but my scanner seems to always give me results that I can work with and create a great looking finished product.

Ideally, I'd take every painting I've ever done to American Art in Annapolis and have them do the image capture. They're AMAZING at what they do!! But sometimes I just don't have the time or the money for that luxury. Plus... Either I'm cheap or smart, because I generally hate paying someone to do something I can do myself. Thus, unless a painting I've done is over 16" x 20", I'm going to scan it in.

I use a Canon scanner and Photoshop to create my final digital image.

I lay the painting down on the scanner (I keep it about 1/4" away from the edge) and scan in sections. For a 16" x 20", I usually have to do 4 scans because my scanner does a piece about 9"x11". Lay one corner down on the scanner, scan, slide the painting down, do the other corner. Pick it up and rotate it 180 degrees (resulting in these last two scans being upside down) and scan in the last 2 sections.

Now I open Photoshop and create a new document the size of the paintin at 300 dpi (so you can print it perfectly and *maybe* even go a little bigger without losing much detail... printing on canvas seems to be pretty forgiving that way). So for this one it was 16"x20" and 300 dpi, which will create a HUGE file and make your computer really, REALLY SUPER PISSED.

Then I copy and paste the contents of each of my scans (in this case 4) into the new document. Once they're all in there, I save it so I don't lose them. After it's saved, I can close all the individual scan files since I no longer need them (and keeping them open will use more memory and make the computer run slower and be more pissed).

(Note: It's probably best *not* to listen to music on the computer as you work on this project, or have anything else open that will take away from your computer's memory. Then you will get freezing or the program spontaneously quits which makes YOU want to spontaneously combust SO SAVE OFTEN! That is in huge font for a reason :)  It might actually take a few minutes to save a file this size. Go grab a snack.)

Once in a while if there's part of the painting that's just not coming together well, I'll do an additional scan of just that part (example: a person's head. You don't want someone's head to have any inconsistencies. When you're putting the scans together it's just easier to have that additional separate scan of the face, too).

So here's the recent scan process of my painting "Sunflowers." Aren't the colors gross?? We'll fix that later. I like to do that part last- it seems the most rewarding :)

This is a Photoshop file size 16"x20" and all 4 scans are just thrown in here (the two upside down ones have been rotated) and stuck in their respective locations.
The black around the edges is from the edge of the canvas not being right up against the edge of the scanner- I want my scan to go alll the way to the edge of the canvas, and include it, rather than chop it off.

The first thing I'll do is start sliding around the 4 chunks of the scan. The arrow keys will be your BFFs (that's "best friends forever", nerds) for this process. Hopefully you've got your scans in relatively straight, because it sucks to have to rotate them and get them JUST right. As you can see, above, the lower right corner isn't quite straight so I had to rotate that one just a leeeeeettle.

Sometimes for this part of the process it's easiest to just pick ONE of the 4 scans and choose that one to line everything else up with. You can move around all 4, but sometimes when you do that, once you move one, another section is all thrown off, and you have to scoot everything around to get it to fit together again. Also sometimes for this part of the process, you can adjust your layer transparency to slightly below 100% opacity and then see exactly what's underneath- this will make lining things up pretty easy, too.

Scoot, scoot, scoot. Nudge, nudge, nudge. Is it lined up yet? As soon as it is, SAVE IT! And then use your crop tool to cut off anything around the edges that you don't like. Your file might end up slightly smaller than exactly 16"x20". That's ok.

I zoom in to the middle of the painting, where all 4 corners line up, to make sure it's as close as I can get it. It sort of doesn't have to be PERFECT, more on that later.

But check out the inconsistencies in lighting. Some parts of the scans come out a little dark if your scanner isn't perfectly flat. Usually this is pretty easy to fix. Here's a good example...

Ewwwww, look at this nasty line. Luckily my scans overlap some, about 2 inches on all sides. This is great because that means I can just erase some of that layer in the front to reveal the still-brightly-colored scan underneath, and the flower petals will look nice.

When erasing on something like this, I prefer to use a relatively large eraser brush (not TOO huge, maybe 1/2"-1" diameter on my screen, depending on what I'm erasing) and really soften up the edges. You won't get a hard line where you've erased that way.
Be careful, if you erase too much, you'll go overboard and erase some of your scan where they don't overlap. Not good!

Ahhhhhh. That's better. It takes some practice, but you want the eraser to just gently blend the layers together. While you're doing this, not only are you fixing the colors, but if there are places where things didn't line up *just right* you'll be fixing that at the same time.

Now here's something I get really, really anal about. I learned this the hard way (and of course went back and fixed it). Zoom WAY in, extremely close up, and check out everything. Chances are you'll see some dust or scratches or flecks of random crap or cat hair. In this case I probably didn't clean off my scanner before I used it.... oops. So when you're zoomed way in, you'll probably see stuff that looks like this (I circled in yellow):

THAT doesn't need to be there!! It might seem silly to go into this much detail- after all, you're not going to be printing your document THIS big. Yeah, you'd think. But that's NOT the way it works, at all. The rule of thumb here is,

IF YOU CAN SEE IT ON YOUR SCREEN, YOU WILL SEE IT ON THE PRINT.

I promise.
So just go fix it. It doesn't hurt, really, and it will be well worth it. It only takes 10-15 minutes at the most depending on how dirty your scanner is- I don't know what you did with that thing.

Just use the rubber stamp tool and set it to pretty small, and maybe a hardness setting somewhere in the middle. You don't want really defined circles where you had to fix things but you don't need to blur the edges a whole lot, either. Sometimes I even 'fix' little tiny inconsistencies in the painting or drawing during this process. Once in a while the scanner will pick up something that is just part of the artwork and doesn't seem to show up in the original piece, but it's there, and certainly doesn't add anything to your prints- example: a thick dab of paint that creates a weird shadow, or a slight inconsistency in the canvas fabric itself that might create a shadow. Get rid of it!

Start zoomed in on one corner and just go horizontally across the whole painting. Then when you get to the edge, scroll up, and go back to the other side. Think search and rescue pattern here.

There. Isn't that better?? :)
NOW SAVE IT! 

So now your scans should be all lined up perfectly (double check!!), your colors should be consistent all around  (double check!!!), and you shouldn't have specks of stuff showing (not too important to double check, you can fix this any time). If everything is perfectly wonderful, FLATTEN ALL THE LAYERS TOGETHER now so we can do color correction! Yaaayyy!

I have to confess, I don't have any elaborate calibrating software. Hell, I don't have ANY calibrating software at all. I did recently get a new monitor which threw a few things slightly off, but I guess by now I've had a lot of my stuff for so long that I generally know how things tend to scan and print for me. Like I know one of my printers tends to darken the reds a little, I know the other one makes some cyans a tiny bit green. I know my scanner HATES orange and blue-green. Anyway... for color correction, I'm not going to go into calibrating- I can't tell you anything about that.

Luckily this painting has no blue-green, so my greens are pretty decent. The oranges are vomitous, non existent actually, and that makes me sad.

I use the Selective Color tool to adjust most of my colors. You can go in and *just* adjust your greens, your yellows, then your reds, even neutrals, black, blues, white, whatever. My yellows were too dark so I lightened them. My oranges were too red, so I took out a bunch of magenta from the reds (orange isn't in the color menu). After the colors were the hues that I wanted them to be, I used the Brightness/Contrast tool to brighten it up just a little and then upped the contrast- seems like with my scans I always have to do that. Sometimes if necessary, the last thing I do is use the Hue/Saturation tool to increase the saturation a bit- my work tends to be pretty bright, and this helps make the prints as accurate as possible.

Voila, the finished product.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

I believe that quote applies very well to my Epson R1900 printer.

Because when it's good.... it's ohhh sooo goood. You put the right paper in and the results of a perfect print will make you want to treat it to an exquisitely aged red wine and the finest local artisan cheeses.

But then there is the downside.

I'm not sure if this printer is the best option for someone like me. I hate, hate, HAAATE being wasteful with just about anything. But I ESPECIALLY dislike it when it comes to the most expensive fluid on the planet: inkjet ink, combined with expensive fine art paper: Hahnemuhle Sugar Cane paper that costs a dollar a sheet for the smallest sizes and almost $3 for the larger ones.

A friend of mine who has this printer told me to print something, anything, once a week just to keep the nozzles and print heads functioning. But did I listen? Noooo. After the temper tantrum this printer has been throwing for almost 24 hours now, I will remember his advice and try to heed it from now on.

If you leave the printer off for months at a time, the print nozzles are very likely to dry out and you'll need to perform multiple nozzle checks and cleanings to make them functional again. THAT MEANS A TON OF WASTED INK! Uuuugh! I am so, so glad I stocked up on ink last year when I had the chance. Anyway... I'm getting ahead of myself.

The low ink levels here, see those? If this was your car, you'd be low on gas, but would have enough to get to a gas station and fill up (most likely).

If your car was made by Epson you would currently be stranded in the middle of the ghetto. With gas still in your tank.

So you check your Printer Status Monitor to see your ink levels. Maybe a couple of them are low, as shown above, but there is still ink in them, so you think you can perform your head cleaning and maybe even run off a print or two before it's time to replace them. But you'd be dead wrong!

Because when you tell the printer to perform the head cleaning, it'll go right ahead and begin the process (flushing your money directly down the toilet) and halfway through with ink levels like these, in the middle of the cleaning, you'll get an error message: "Could not complete cleaning."

WTF! So you get up and look at the printer and see the ink light on- meaning you have to replace an ink cartridge. You begrudgingly take out the old one, open up a brand new one, and replace it. Yay! Good as new! But the print head is probably still clogged, so now you have to go and do ANOTHER head cleaning. Wasting even MORE ink.

The worst part is, see that little graphic up there? The screenshot of the ink levels? Obviously the printer knows good and well just how much ink is in there.
It should be able to tell you whether or not you have enough ink to do a head cleaning!!! Why should it start the process when it SHOULD know it can't finish it? It would be so much easier if it just told you to replace the low ink cartridges, rather than starting to perform the head cleaning anyway and of course draining your nice full tanks of ink in addition to the ones that are already too low. But no.

Yes Epson. I see what's going on here.

And there isn't a damn thing I can do about it.

Ohhhhhhh, and another thing.
It's got a gloss optimizer cartridge for printing glossy images. From what I've heard, it's great, but the printer runs through it really fast. Whatever. I have never, ever used it because so far, all of my prints have been on matte paper. They look a lot better that way. Maybe one day I'll get into printing on canvas and want the shiny coating but for now, I always make sure I select matte paper in the print dialog so I won't use the gloss coating.

Yet... somehow... notice in the image above, the gloss optimizer (the ink that looks light gray) is NOT full. But I never use it, so it should be full up to the brim. Right? Am I crazy???
So even if you don't use it, ever, you're somehow going to run out of it.
I know, because it happened to me last year. Wouldn't you assume when it "ran out" (i.e. mysteriously vaporized), I wouldn't need to replace it since I don't ever use it??

If you had a random can of hominy in the pantry- even if you never ever eat it and don't even like hominy, so you wouldn't eat it, but it's there- and one day the can disappeared, you wouldn't need to run to the store and buy more hominy.
...Or would you?
OH YES!
Yes you WOULD!

And that's how this printer works, too! Even if you never, ever use the gloss, it will vanish into thin air one day and demand replacement. You will say "No, dear printer, for it is not I who ever uses the gloss and therefore you can print my prints just fine without it." So the printer will throw a tantrum like a petulant child and refuse to give you any more prints until it gets what it wants:
More gloss optimizer.

The best thing about this is that the gloss cartridge is only sold in packages of 4.
Ok, might as well stock up I guess.
EXCEPT
That they expire. And if you try to put in an expired cartridge? I'll give you one guess as to what happens.



I got 9 perfect prints out of it yesterday after replacing 3 ink cartridges and numerous head cleanings etc. This morning I fire it up, and since everything was perfect yesterday I assume they would be today, too. But no. I do a print on my fine art paper and get all kinds of lines and crap running through it.

My advice if you have this printer:

-Don't leave it turned off for months at a time.
-Before you print on your expensive papers, at least print a test sheet and do a head cleaning if you must. Then you're just wasting ink, not ink AND paper.
-And maybe after the warranty expires, check out a continuous ink system.

Basics of How to Make Prints (Part 2)

If you've moved onto Part 2 of how to make prints (digitally), hopefully that means you've got an image capture of the artwork that you wish to reproduce!

Once you have your image as a digital file, you can have prints made by a local print shop, or an online company, or make them yourself. Making the prints yourself is probably cheaper in the long run, but will require more of an investment up front (equipment, ink, paper, calibrating software if you choose to do so).

I now make most of my own prints, but when I first started selling prints of my art, I had my prints done locally or ordered larger ones from various online shops. Here are some of the online shops I've used with outstanding results:

www.imagekind.com
This site is great because you can upload lots of your images, set up your own online gallery, and it's free to join (there are paid memberships, too, with other benefits). Once your work is uploaded, you can just sit back and let ImageKind do the work when someone orders! You can customize the prices of your art and how much money you'll make from your prints. People can even order your work already framed, and the frame prices are very, very reasonable. You can customize and pick out the frame and mat combo for each piece of your art, or customers can also pick their own if they choose to do so. And, of course, you can order prints of your work from here to sell at shows and galleries.
My ImageKind gallery is here: http://SamanthasArtStudio.imagekind.com/

www.iprintfromhome.com
This is a pretty popular site for fine art prints. I've ordered giclee prints on Somerset Velvet paper from this website and have always been impressed with the quality. The more prints you order at a time, the cheaper each print becomes (a lot of print companies work this way).

www.canvasondemand.com
This is where I get all of my canvas prints made. A couple years ago when I started ordering prints of my art on canvas, I ordered from a few different companies to compare prices and quality. Canvas on demand wasn't the cheapest, but was the best in quality by far. After comparing 3 or 4 different companies, I knew there was no way I could order prints on canvas from anyone else. If I'm going to sell prints of my art, I want the absolute best that I can find, and these are definitely worth paying the little extra. I've recommended this site to numerous other artists because I truly feel they offer a superior product that you can really feel confident about. At art shows I've had a lot of other artists compliment my canvas prints- when you combine a quality canvas print with a great image capture, you'll get amazing results.

A couple notes about prints on canvas:
They are kind of controversial.... Some people (like me) love, love, loooove them. On the other hand, some will say "It's trying to be a painting but it's not." Prints on canvas can look so much like a real painting that it's hard to tell the difference. As someone without a ton of money to throw around, I love prints on canvas because they look so much like a real painting at a fraction of the price. I guess some people are afraid that if they buy a print on canvas, it'll be hanging in their house and a guest might make a comment like, "Ohhh, this is such a beautiful painting!" Then they will have to clarify, "That's not a painting, technically it's a print" and the sky will fall and all hell will break loose.

But here's why I love them so :)
When I was shopping at a fantastic artist's gallery in Montreal, the artist had her original works on display, and prints on canvas (in many sizes), and prints on paper (also in many sizes). As much as I loved her work, I couldn't afford an original. The canvas prints weren't cheap, but they weren't necessarily expensive, either. And the paper prints were nice- buuuut when you stood there in her gallery with a paper print in one hand (for, say, $30), and a canvas giclee in the other hand (for, let's say, about $90).... there was just no comparison. The canvas print was stretched and wrapped (no need to add in the extra cost of a frame), and the colors were so vibrant and rich- and it had such depth. Since I wanted something that looked as close to the original as I could get, I chose to buy the canvas print.

If you choose to make your own prints, take a lot of time and do plenty of research on different printers. There are so many out there and all have their own set of pros and cons! For example, when I was researching printers, I remember reading a lot about photo-printers and that certain brands are generally much better for reproducing black and white images. I knew I wouldn't be doing anything in black and white, so none of that really affected my decision on a printer. You may also want to check the costs of ink, and you can even find websites that break down square-inch cost of printing.
(Here is one that I've used: http://www.redrivercatalog.com/cost-of-inkjet-printing.html)

My boss at work had some great advice about buying a camper (I think it was a camper? Maybe it was something else entirely??) but the advice applies to many things in life, including buying a printer to make fine art prints:
"When you're shopping for a printer, buy your 2nd printer first."

All that means is, when shopping for a printer you may think "I'll buy a cheap printer for my first one and then just buy a better one later." Naahhh. Buy the best that you can afford first- this will end up saving you money. There's no reason to have two printers, one that works pretty good and your super-awesome-high-quality-fancy-pants printer. You'll easily drop $150-$200 on a printer that works decent, but why not put that $150-$200 toward a really, really good printer?- Some of which start at just $350-$400? (And go up- way up- from there.) Plus if you figure out exactly which printer you want, you can take your time and hunt around for a good sale. (And don't forget, you can also look for one used!)

Basics of How to Make Prints (Part 1)

Online or at various art shows, I'm surprised by the number of artists who ask me, "How do you make your prints?" Coming from a Graphic Design background in college, I've done it for so long now that I take it for granted!
Since it's such a common question, I thought I'd make a blog post (or, two) about it. Hopefully other artists out in the Wide World of Internets will somehow stumble upon this post and find it useful.

(This post is about making digital prints from a computer, as I'm definitely not educated in the other traditional methods of printmaking. I'm also assuming if you're going to a pro to have it done, they'll know what file type to save it as- and if you're doing it yourself, you're computer savvy enough to know about different file formats.)

*** If you've got questions after reading this, feel free to ask them in the comments section after this post or email me. ***

There are 2 main steps in creating a print from your original artwork:
#1. Obtaining the image capture as a digital file.
#2. Printing said file.

The methods of doing these two things and all of the in-between is where you really get into the nitty-gritty.

Since this will be a little long, I'll make it a two-parter. This, part one, will focus on the
IMAGE CAPTURE.
There are a number of ways to get an image of your art onto the computer.

If you're not computer savvy...
The easiest way for those who are not computer-savvy is to take your artwork to a business who specializes in this very thing. You'll have to check your local (or in some cases, not so local) listings to find a place. For example, the best place I've found is about an hour and a half away: "American Art Associates" in Annapolis, MD. Most printmakers will do an image capture for you: You bring in your art and they essentially put it on an easel and take a very high resolution photo of your image. Their lenses and equipment eliminate glares and shadows. They put the picture onto their computer, adjust the color if necessary, do whatever other magic they do (I've never been part of this process) and save it. From there you can have them make prints for you, or you can ask them to save it on a disk for you for later use.

Pros of taking your art to a printmaking business for capturing the image and making prints:
1. These guys (and gals) do this for a living. This is what they get paid to do. If you're going to a reputable place, you can tell them what you want, sit back and relax, and they'll handle it AND make sure it looks great!
2. It's a lot easier than doing it yourself, aaannnnnd....
3. Much less time consuming than doing it yourself.

Cons of having a printmaker capture the image for you:
1. It can be expensive (depending on what your idea of expensive is...). An image capture of a large (over 11"x14") artwork, from my experience, can run $50 to $100 - maybe more. But since doing it yourself can be quite time consuming, having a professional capture an image of a large/difficult to photograph artwork is often well worth every penny.

Or try a little DIY.
If you are computer savvy and have some graphics software (Paint-Shop-Pro, PhotoShop, a myriad of others), you can try doing it yourself.
You can buy a scanner (they're pretty affordable, $100 and up) and scanning software (which should come with the scanner), lay your art on the scanner, scan it & import the image into the computer, and then save the file.

Pros of scanning it yourself:
1. After purchasing a scanner, it's basically free.
2. No driving around or making appointments- do it at your leisure.
3. If the artwork is 8"x10" or smaller and not glossy, it's a fairly simple and straightforward process. Lay it on the scanner. Open your scanning software. Scan it in. Piece of cake. (You can even eat a piece of cake as your scanner imports the image.)

Cons of scanning it yourself:
1. It can take up a lot of time. So even though the process is free, is it worth your time to sit and fool around with it?
2. If you've used glossy paint.... forget it. If your paint has any gloss to it at all, the light from the scanner is going to reflect off that and make white highlights. No good. And no simple way (that I know of) to fix it.
3. Large pieces can be a huge pain in the ass and take a very long time. When I have finished a 16"x20" painting (which is not that big), it takes me at least 4 scans to scan it in. Most scanner beds are about 9"x 11". Even an 11"x14" artwork will take about 4 scans to piece everything together all nice and neat.
Oh, and that whole "piecing together" process? That can take HOURS. And you need good graphics software to do it, too. Sometimes the colors in each scan might vary slightly. Sometimes you get shadows along a gutter (where your painting overlaps the edge of the scanner bed). Sometimes you've laid your artwork down slightly off from a 90-degree angle, so you might have to do a little rotating to get it to fit. The larger your artwork, the more scans you have to do, the more opportunities for unwanted shadows, rotations, overlaps, etc. It ends up being almost like putting together a puzzle.

(I scan most of mine myself because I'm cheap like that, and since my favorite place is an hour and a half away, I have to do a bit of planning to allow myself time to drive over there. Plus gas money of course, blech. Again, I'm cheap.... When I can afford to be. Meaning that if I've got an painting that is huge, I'll gladly pay to have it done. I'll emphasize again that it is worth every penny.)

UPDATE: I've now created a post about how I scan in my paintings! It's here:
http://samanthasartstudio.blogspot.com/2010/07/how-to-scan-in-painting.html

Some artists have mentioned using a digital camera and taking a very high-resolution photo of their artwork themselves. You can try this if you've got a nice digital camera and, again, a little bit of graphics software. Be sure to *not* put your artwork in direct sun- it will be too bright and have much to much glare. Ideally, you want a bright but overcast day- or, if it's sunny, you want the art to be out of direct sunlight but in a bright place. No shadows.

Pros of using your own digital camera:
1. None of that scanning/piecing together business if you've got a particularly large painting or drawing. Woo hoo!
2. If you're out of the sun, no worries about glossy paint or shadows.
3. Affordable... obviously. (Unless you go buy a very expensive new camera!)

Cons of using a digital camera:
1. If you've got a very large painting, you're going to need to take a photo at very VERY high resolution to make large prints from the painting.
2. Wobble? You might need to use a tripod to take the best photo possible.

I've tried the digital camera method- admittedly my camera is almost 10 years old. I took photos of some paintings but the largest I seemed to be able to print them and make them look good was only about 8"x10". I'm by no means an expert on this method and I'm sure digital cameras have come a long way in the last decade!! If you've already got a camera and some software, you might as well give this method a shot and play around with it, decide for yourself- it couldn't hurt.


Okay, so by this point you have your image saved as a file. Now what?... See Part 2 :)
Coming soon!