Art & Art Tutorials
Scanning Art Tutorial
Intro
If you wish to scan artworks larger than your scanner can handle in one take this tutorial is for you. It is quite simple really but there are a few things you need to know before you start scanning. The technique covered in this tutorial works for any size scanner, when the task is to scan art larger than it is made to handle. But for now we will focus on an A4/Letter-sized Canon LiDE flatbed scanner as they are quite common and cheap to obtain. Read on.
The Setup
For our little project we have an A4/Letter-sized scanner and an unfinished A3 acrylics painting (A3 is twice the size of A4 and obviously doesn't fit in the scanner all at once).
The Scanning
So we need to scan the artpiece in 3 steps: top, middle and bottom as shown in the pictures below.
Once you have scanned all three parts and imported them into whatever graphics editing program you use, you need to assemble the three digitally scanned parts. For this make a new document large enough to fit all three scanned parts (you can crop the image later). Next you need to remove some of each scanned part (not the actual art piece just the digital scans) in your imaging application (Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro etc), approximately where the red stippled lines are drawn in the images above. The scanned parts you wish to keep are the ones represented by the numbers 1, 2 and 3. The rest we can't use so just delete them. You need to remove these parts because they haven't been in full contact with the scanner surface while you scanned. Therefore these scanned parts will be differently lighted and possibly blurred also.
Assemble The Parts
After you have removed the parts described above, you need to put the three remaining parts together. For this create 3 different layers in your new document, one for each part and rotate/mirror them if you need to. Next you need to manually move each part into place so they fit together. This requires a little hard work. Once you're done you might still see, just barely, where the parts come together. To eliminate these "seams" read the next part.
Adjustments
If you can still see where the parts come together you need to adjust the brightness/contrast until they're fully gone. A good advise is to zoom in real close while you adjust as it yields the best results. Once you are done merge the layers and crop the image. You are done.
The last few words
That's basically it for this tutorial. The technique works on even larger sized artworks as well. The key is to scan your work in separate parts, delete unwanted sections of these parts, assemble the rest and finally adjust the colors, contrast and brightness. I hope you learned something new from this tutorial and with these last words it's time for the final punctuation. Happy scanning.
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If you wish to scan artworks larger than your scanner can handle in one take this tutorial is for you. It is quite simple really but there are a few things you need to know before you start scanning. The technique covered in this tutorial works for any size scanner, when the task is to scan art larger than it is made to handle. But for now we will focus on an A4/Letter-sized Canon LiDE flatbed scanner as they are quite common and cheap to obtain. Read on.
The Setup
For our little project we have an A4/Letter-sized scanner and an unfinished A3 acrylics painting (A3 is twice the size of A4 and obviously doesn't fit in the scanner all at once).
The Scanning
So we need to scan the artpiece in 3 steps: top, middle and bottom as shown in the pictures below.
Once you have scanned all three parts and imported them into whatever graphics editing program you use, you need to assemble the three digitally scanned parts. For this make a new document large enough to fit all three scanned parts (you can crop the image later). Next you need to remove some of each scanned part (not the actual art piece just the digital scans) in your imaging application (Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro etc), approximately where the red stippled lines are drawn in the images above. The scanned parts you wish to keep are the ones represented by the numbers 1, 2 and 3. The rest we can't use so just delete them. You need to remove these parts because they haven't been in full contact with the scanner surface while you scanned. Therefore these scanned parts will be differently lighted and possibly blurred also.
Assemble The Parts
After you have removed the parts described above, you need to put the three remaining parts together. For this create 3 different layers in your new document, one for each part and rotate/mirror them if you need to. Next you need to manually move each part into place so they fit together. This requires a little hard work. Once you're done you might still see, just barely, where the parts come together. To eliminate these "seams" read the next part.
Adjustments
If you can still see where the parts come together you need to adjust the brightness/contrast until they're fully gone. A good advise is to zoom in real close while you adjust as it yields the best results. Once you are done merge the layers and crop the image. You are done.
The last few words
That's basically it for this tutorial. The technique works on even larger sized artworks as well. The key is to scan your work in separate parts, delete unwanted sections of these parts, assemble the rest and finally adjust the colors, contrast and brightness. I hope you learned something new from this tutorial and with these last words it's time for the final punctuation. Happy scanning.
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