Any Scanning Advice?

DennisP · Post by **DennisP** » Thu Apr 28, 2005 2:28 am

I am currently drawing on 12" x 9" Bristol Board. My issue is that I have a 11.5" x 8.5" scanner. What I'm doing is 2 scans and peicing it together in photoshop. I finally made a panel template and am just bringing over one panel at a time and that's sped things up alittle. I was just wondering if anyone has a quicker or better way of doing this? It seems to work fine, it's just time consuming.

Phact0rri · Post by **Phact0rri** » Thu Apr 28, 2005 7:04 am

well your format is how I would do it. thats what I do when I draw on bigger sized paper however the largest I draw on is A4.

the other solution, which is used for paintings and things is to just take photos of it and scan them in. course if your looking for good good sized dpi for ediiting and colouring and things its probably not gonna help to much.

you could always go to a smaller surface and just put your comic together in two piece divisions and do your layout in photoshop.

Picatrix · Post by **Picatrix** » Thu Apr 28, 2005 9:39 am

I came across your problem as well... my preferred paper is 12x9, but my scanner is 8.5x11. I took the easy/lazy way out. I grab a ruler and draw an edge a half inch in from the right side and an inch off the bottom. Then, when I scan it, I use the crop tool to get rid of the excess (when there is any). Lazy, but it works for me....

Dburkhead · Post by **Dburkhead** » Thu Apr 28, 2005 1:33 pm

Picatrix wrote:I came across your problem as well... my preferred paper is 12x9, but my scanner is 8.5x11. I took the easy/lazy way out. I grab a ruler and draw an edge a half inch in from the right side and an inch off the bottom. Then, when I scan it, I use the crop tool to get rid of the excess (when there is any). Lazy, but it works for me....

I use an even easier way. [gloat]The copier at work also has a scanner function (up to 600 dpi) and handles up to 11X17 paper, which just so happens to be the size Bristol board I use for my comic.[/gloat]

DennisP · Post by **DennisP** » Thu Apr 28, 2005 5:58 pm

dburkhead is showin off now

I tried using my photocopier at work to resize it but, I found out what crappy equiptment they have...and I'm suppose to work at a cutting edge communication company.

Faub · Post by **Faub** » Thu Apr 28, 2005 6:03 pm

I have 11x14 bristol and have to scan twice and stitch together. It takes quite a while when the finished page is 6000x9000 and I only have 512 megs of RAM. Once it's all properly scanned and stuff, I have no problems. It takes me between an hour and a half to 2 hours to CG a page: scan, stitch, text and word balloons.

Dburkhead · Post by **Dburkhead** » Thu Apr 28, 2005 6:23 pm

DennisP wrote:dburkhead is showin off now I tried using my photocopier at work to resize it but, I found out what crappy equiptment they have...and I'm suppose to work at a cutting edge communication company.

Of course. Didn't you see the [gloat][/gloat] tags? :p

Jackhass · Post by **Jackhass** » Thu Apr 28, 2005 6:47 pm

Scanning things in two pieces and putting them together is really your only option unless you want to spring for a bigger scanner.

Warofwinds · Post by **Warofwinds** » Thu Apr 28, 2005 6:58 pm

Leech off of your neighbor's? I believe this thread has some other advice too:
viewtopic.php?t=64899

RemusShepherd · Post by **RemusShepherd** » Fri Apr 29, 2005 6:12 am

My scanner is broken at the moment -- I need to buy a new one. But when I want something digitized, I just lay it on a table with bright lighting and take a picture with my digital camera. The quality isn't as good as a scanner, but usually the resolution is so high (4 megapixels is huge) that it resizes into a fairly good scan.

That method would probably work with any size paper you care to use.

War · Post by **War** » Fri Apr 29, 2005 8:35 am

4MP isn't really enough for scanning comics. Most people scan at 300dpi, which works out at around 8.5MP. I tend to scan mine at 600dpi which works out at 33.7MP. There's quite a few people here scanning two parts, so those'd all be around 17MP.
There is an affordably priced large scanner made by Mustek. It can only do 300x600dpi scanning, but for stuff that size, you won't want to go much larger.
This is about the only large scanner you can get without having to shell out big bucks (the UK amazon site has more info about it).

Faub · Post by **Faub** » Fri Apr 29, 2005 9:46 am

I work on my scans at roughly 7000x9000 or 63 MP. That gets cropped down to about 6000x8500 (51MP) then reduced to 3750x5925 (22.2MP) before I put the text and word balloons in. That's 600 DPI for a 6.625"x10.25" page with a 1/4" border around the edge.

RemusShepherd · Post by **RemusShepherd** » Fri Apr 29, 2005 10:34 am

Interesting, interesting. I was under the impression that comic artists worked digitally on pictures 2-4 times their actual screen size -- so for example, my comic pages are 800x600, and I work on them at 1600x1200.

You're telling me that you're working on pages about 10 times actual screen size. Verrrrrry interesting.

Dburkhead · Post by **Dburkhead** » Fri Apr 29, 2005 10:45 am

I scan originally at 600 DPI (default for the scanner), reduce immediately to 300 DPI in which I work, then finally reduce to 72 DPI for the web.

FWIW.

Sput · Post by **Sput** » Fri Apr 29, 2005 1:03 pm

RemusShepherd wrote:Interesting, interesting. I was under the impression that comic artists worked digitally on pictures 2-4 times their actual screen size -- so for example, my comic pages are 800x600, and I work on them at 1600x1200.

You're telling me that you're working on pages about 10 times actual screen size. Verrrrrry interesting.

i work on mine 1:1 >___>'''
but if i want to do any other pretty special stuff it's about three-four times its size. unless it's a painting, then it gets up in the 10kx10k because i am terrible and small details.

Chibiartstudios · Post by **Chibiartstudios** » Fri Apr 29, 2005 10:59 pm

Scanners that can scan 11x17 or so are so rare and expensive it's sad. I know. I've looked. I honestly have no idea how companies like marvel do it. Though I guess they know peolple I don't. Kinkos and such aren't better as they ask you to use their scanning service at $24 a pop. So that's no go either. Slightly larger scanners than the 8.5x11 ones do exist more than the bigger variety. But they are still rare.

In any case. I scan twice and stitch them together. I have to actually trim the top of the page to make sure I don't end up with a missing spot in the center but it works. Once stitched I can then PS to my hearts content.

I also normally scan at 300dpi though 600 is also popular.

Faub · Post by **Faub** » Sat Apr 30, 2005 9:32 am

There is quite a difference between preparing for the web and preparing for print. My pages are prepared for print then shrunk down for the web. Anything lower than 600 dpi and the text has jaggies. For REALLY high quality prints, the text and line art should be saved 1200 dpi (7950x12300 for a comic sized page) Or better to get a high quality font and save the file as vector art. Unfortunately, my artwork doesn't translate well to vector so I have to do the really huge image file thing.

That guy · Post by **That guy** » Sat Apr 30, 2005 5:42 pm

How often do you need to clean out old files from your computer, Faub? I would think that much space would just slow everything down like MAD. But then, you don't want to delete any of it - so do you just have racks of backlog CDs or something?

Dburkhead · Post by **Dburkhead** » Sat Apr 30, 2005 6:37 pm

CD and DVD burners are your friends.

Ryuko · Post by **Ryuko** » Sat Apr 30, 2005 7:05 pm

Flash drives as well.