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[hawkwood]

simple question how do I get a better scanned image of my pencil drawings? with doing so many lately I've noticed that I am loosing any subtleties of shading that I manage to put into the drawing. At the moment I am using a Lexmark 1130 3 in one (printer,scanner,copyer, fax) using the packaged software scaning as if colour photo at 300dpi and saving straight to paintshop pro 7 as a .bmp

help and advice desperatly needed

Edited by hawkwood, 24 June 2005 - 10:19 AM.

[Graeme]

Hi Tim,

Don't know if this will help any as I use a canon scanner, but when I'm scanning pencil drawings, rather than scanning as a colour image I set it to monochrome or line art. I can also tinker with the brightness contrast settings in the preview till just right.
Another problem with pencil is you can sometimes get a reflection back from the graphite on the paper and what is a dark line then comes out white.
This may sound stupid but as long as your drawing is finshed, put some talcum powder on it and then blow it all off. There should be enough on the picture so as not to be seen, but enough to stop light reflecting back when scanning.
I too use PSP (V.9) and prefer to save as Jpeg. Preferable format for the web and is of decent enough quality to print also. If its better quality you are going for save as an EPS or PSD.

hope this helps

[Neo_Art]

"3 in one" scanners never had enough good quality scans.
If you want best quality you have to look for a better scanner
(MicroTek/ Umax, Avision, Epson etc) or some other flatbed scanner.
Epson Perfection 2580 PHOTO or Epson Perfection 2480 PHOTO
would be not a bad choice (approx. $100).

If you don't want to buy a new scanner, you must test different
variations of the scanner configuration.

Useful information:
http://www.itreviews.co.uk/guide/hguide3.htm

Tips:
http://www.scantips.com/
http://www.scantips.com/simple.html
http://desktoppublishing.com/scanning.html
http://www.pgacon.com/tips_on_scanning.htm
http://users.animanga.com/axel/prep.htm

[hawkwood]

thanks guys