Ideas from cartoonists, or not?

Drollstreet · Post by **Drollstreet** » Sun Sep 17, 2000 1:52 am

Ok, I'm wondering if anyone knows how I can (for free) make my comics and graphics look cleaner, any ideas?If you'd rather respond at my personal message board, go there and do so, if not, just reply here.------------------
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Screwball McGoo [gDC] · Sun Sep 17, 2000 4:05 am

The art looks relatively clean. The only things I could think of is to stop scanning in greyscale if you do and to find an eliminate noise function in a non-Paint drawing program you might happen to have. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by drollstreet:
Ok, I'm wondering if anyone knows how I can (for free) make my comics and graphics look cleaner, any ideas?If you'd rather respond at my personal message board, go there and do so, if not, just reply here.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>------------------
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ZOMBIE USER 197 · Post by **ZOMBIE USER 197** » Sun Sep 17, 2000 7:32 am

I agree with Mcgoo. The art is clean, but the greyscale scanning is dirtying it up a bit. Then the JPG save is adding noise (JPG is a lossy compression, and not real efficient for line art).Here's what I'd do:1) scan at a high pixel density, like 150 or 200 dpi, but scan in B/W only.2) Flip the image colors to "true color" or 256 greyscale.3) Reduce the image to your posting size.4) Reduce the palette to 8 or 16 greys5) Save as GIF. It'll be nice and clean, and should be pretty small, too. I bet you could cut the byte-size in half AND have cleaner images.------------------
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Tirdun · Post by **Tirdun** » Mon Sep 18, 2000 3:04 am

I've got to second the .gif format. Almost all programs destroy line art in JPG form, it's mostly used for photos and such, when you want subtle blends between areas of the pictures. Also, if you scan/save in .gif you can go back and make nice, clean changes (or tidy up anything that get's cluttered) using a bucket paint or A-B replace.Soooo, scan at a high res/size, then convert to gif then reduce colors and size (try with and without antialias to compare).

Screwball McGoo [gDC] · Mon Sep 18, 2000 3:50 am

I'm sorry... What was that? A little louder, perhaps. ::laughs:: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Howard:
I agree with Mcgoo. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>------------------
"200 Posts and still here? What does it take to get read of McGoo." - McGoo's evil side. Technically, he writes <A HREF="http://nerdz.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank>Nerdz </A>, too.

Drollstreet · Post by **Drollstreet** » Mon Sep 18, 2000 4:23 am

Ok, I'll try these, I don't know if my scanner will save in.gif, though...

Drollstreet · Post by **Drollstreet** » Mon Sep 18, 2000 4:23 am

Ok, I'll try these, I don't know if my scanner will save in.gif, though...------------------
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Seven3 · Post by **Seven3** » Mon Sep 18, 2000 10:16 am

My scanner won't either, so I scan as *.bmp and convert it to gif/jpeg with <A HREF="http://www.xnview.com" TARGET=_blank>XnView.</A> the site's not much, but the program's awesome- and just not because it's freeware.------------------
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Drollstreet · Post by **Drollstreet** » Tue Sep 19, 2000 3:17 am

I hope. I'm downloading that thing, and am gonna see if it works. If I can clean up my images enough, I might take a week-long hiatus and re-scan all my comics (a pain in the ass now that I have more than 10) I'll be back after I try this out...------------------
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Screwball McGoo [gDC] · Tue Sep 19, 2000 6:07 am

You know that made no sense to me whatsoever. I save all my files off my scanner as JPEG at 20% size. ------------------
"200 Posts and still here? What does it take to get read of McGoo." - McGoo's evil side. Technically, he writes <A HREF="http://nerdz.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank>Nerdz </A>, too.

ZOMBIE USER 197 · Post by **ZOMBIE USER 197** » Tue Sep 19, 2000 9:25 am

Hah. I re-scanned 60 comics. I had to--I'd been reducing them with a copier, and THEN scanning them (my scanner was too small for the strips). Then my father-in-law gave me an 8 1/2" x 14" flatbad HP scanner... I tried it out, and the images were cleaner. So I killed a Saturday, and re-did everything.My scanner won't GIF images, but it will TIF them. From there I can work the image, and finally GIF it for posting. Be SURE to save ALL your old TIFs! If you ever want to publish a book, you'll need the larger-sized images for clarity. 72dpi GIFs look tiny and crappy in print, but a 250 dpi TIF is actually passable. Okay, maybe you don't ever want to do a book, but if you gain a large following for your strip, there's a big chunk'o'change waiting for you.--Howard

ZOMBIE USER 197 · Post by **ZOMBIE USER 197** » Wed Sep 20, 2000 9:07 am

Which part made no sense? The bit about scanning as TIF files? BTW, if you are scanning as a JPG, you are corrupting your image--it's getting compressed and munged on the way to disk. You'll do much better to scan as a large TIF, and then compress the image later after you've had time to tweak it (and then you should be using GIF format rather than JPG, but we've been over that).

BJ · Post by BJ » Wed Sep 20, 2000 9:15 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Howard:
Be SURE to save ALL your old TIFs! If you ever want to publish a book, you'll need the larger-sized images for clarity. 72dpi GIFs look tiny and crappy in print, but a 250 dpi TIF is actually passable.--Howard <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Actually, I find that optically reduced art works best for print compilations. Of course, all the print work I've done has been self-published, and I have yet to find a decent printshop that'll take scanned artwork for print.But. Saving backups is a good thing, always. If your archive blows up, you won't have to waste a Saturday re-scanning everything. <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/smile.gif">