How can I ensure that my images look the same as the original once they're scanned?
I am working on a book of cartoons to be self-published later this year. My art is hand-drawn and inked using Uni-Pin fine liners and Windsor & Newton ProMarker pens, so getting a high-quality transfer from paper to digital media is essential before I eventually send everything off to print.
However, the colours are coming out very dark, expecially the browns and I am having trouble digitally editing the colours after the fact, even in GIMP which is usually very handy.
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- Breakthrough achieved, I think! Thanks for all the help
- As I'm having trouble ke getting the right quality on my end (let alone hoping to goodness that it'll work out on the publisher's end!), I intend to pay for a local photo printing place to scan and adjust the images for colour and sharpness. £27 for 54 images, which I'll take home and clean up for errors in photoshop (erasing old colour bleeds from the originals etc) before passing on to the publisher.I will have to ask at the time and make sure that if the images need to be converted to pdf or other file extension, that the colour settings will be preserved.
- I think when you go to print you can specify Pantone colours. Maybe explore that now with whoever will be printing your book. You may find when the book goes to press, it isn’t just the browns that go sideways
- Hi Matthew!Not sure if that's what you are looking for but a few things. It's quite hard to simulate how a print will be on a screen.AFAIK, GIMP doesn't naturally process images in CMYK, and unless you print them on a home printer (inkjet) that how the print will have to be (generalising here)see if this bit helps thoughhttps://askubuntu.com/questions/114858/how-to-convert-image-to-cmyk-in-gimpIf that doesnt answer your query, you can still go to "Affinity photo" which is a software similar to photoshop and does a very good job with that kind of things. No subscription, but around £50 with a month free trial.https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/The thing is, you will need to be able to load a printer's colour profile into the software, in order to tell your screen to simulate the print. For that, you need to get hold of the printer colour profile in the first place.That way, when you will adjust the colours, you will adjust them in a way that represents your print (more or less, nothing comes out perfect unless you're a pro printer yourself)...Of course that's if you've determined the scan was OK in the first place. I have a 20 years old scanner (Epson perfection 2400 ) and it's perfectly good. All good scanners come with a "pro" software (in my case EPSON scan) where you can set up black point and white point, which will be a good starting point.Send me a message if you need more info!
- Sometimes a tripod with a good camera can be better than a cheap scanner. On the other hand, it scans at 600dpi and in tiff format. Another option is to have it scanned at an art print shop. Editing should not be a problem if it is scanned in good quality.
- are you working in CMYK ?, not all blacks are true blacks when it comes to printing. Desaturated work flow may help.
- Certainly sounds like an issue with the scan rather than GIMP (unless its your screen!). I have a cheap Epson scanner that is quite old and the colours from any scan very closely match the original. To locate the problem, a) open the scanned image on a different computer to eliminate the screen as an issue, b) open the scanned image with a different image viewer to eliminate GIMP as the issue, c) try scanning with a different scanner or use a digital camera to determine if the scanner is the issue. It's possible that the marker pens you are using might act oddly under scanner light and return less light than expected but I'd be surprised if that were the case. My final thought is to make sure you have a high quality format for the scan. I imagine you are using TIFF format (high quality, big file size) for print but just make sure the scanner isn't set to something like PNG, or JPG with a compression below 80.
- Hi Matt, echoing what Elle’s said it sounds as if it may not be Gimp which is the issue but most likely your scan stage. When you scan, I would particularly take note of the “eye dropper” tool in your scan software and use that with the colour sliders/histogram to make sure your scanner is reading the colours in your work as you want it to. YouTube has been really helpful for me with tutorials.
- HeyI'm not familiar with GIMP but personally I've always taken scanned art through photoshop for colour corrections and edits.I would say if you're finding that everything is uniformally scanning too dark this issue may be at the scan stage. I would suggest first checking our scan settings and trying a few passes with longer exposure/more brightness and seeign how that imports.Generally it is easier to fine tune colours when the image is too bright than too dark.Hope that helps at least a little!
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