Picture Help

[Nergali]

I used to use a scanner when I drew my art, followed by uploading them off my camera (which apparently uploads the pictures with the same quality). No matter what I do, the pictures look wierd. The background looks grey and the drawings appear faint. Can anyone here help?



Here's an example. (most of my art is for Snaiad.)

[Hydromancerx]

I tried to fix it but no luck. You need to have more light I think. Did you use a flash when you took the picture?

[Nergali]

I took it with flash, up close, etc... and they all came up the same.

[Building Blocks]

use no flash, put the sheet on a mono color surface, set a desk lamp across the image, take the pic at 14 in

[Nergali]

Okay, I'll try that with a new drawing I just made.
Post Merge: April 03, 2010, 12:18:45 PM

Thanks for the help. It looks much better than the old ones! This took about 20 minutes to conceptualize and draw.

[Hydromancerx]

use no flash, put the sheet on a mono color surface, set a desk lamp across the image, take the pic at 14 in

Yeah. I agree.

[Building Blocks]

being the son of a photographer helps with these things

[MNIDJM]

since my question is related, I have a picture that I scanned to the computer that I don't want to trace over in Paint like usual because it will lose something. Anyone know how to remove the graininess of the lines so i can color?

[jlind11]

for outlines I use GIMP (if you can download it my instructions will help)

-set up a picture like in LadyM's tutorial (lines above a white layer)
-change the opacity of the original lines to REALLY low (~20-30%) so you can barely see them
-make a transparent layer under the lines
-make a REALLY small brush (1-3 px dm and soft) and use airbrush; brush size may be optional depending)
 -this makes the brush take a LONG TIME to put down color (constant back and forth motion ), but it allows you to gradually get your lines right, rather than laying down a hard lines and undoing constantly
-go over your lines (duh); take your time (tweaking is allowed of course)
-once you have them the way you want, just delete the original

[Hydromancerx]

-change the opacity of the original lines to REALLY low (~20-30%) so you can barely see them

You don't need to do this. You can always use "multiply" function to have the lines show up but are able to fill in the white spaces with color, much like a coloring book. As long as the line drawing is on the top layer it should work.

-go over your lines (duh)

I almost never do this.

[Gec]

It all depends on the look you want.

Since you want to maintain that original sketch look, just set that layer's blending option to "multiply" like Hydro said and color on a layer under it.

[jlind11]

-change the opacity of the original lines to REALLY low (~20-30%) so you can barely see them

You don't need to do this. You can always use "multiply" function to have the lines show up but are able to fill in the white spaces with color, much like a coloring book. As long as the line drawing is on the top layer it should work.

-go over your lines (duh)

I almost never do this.

I'm talking about using a sketch to make a lineart.

[Clarke]

since my question is related, I have a picture that I scanned to the computer that I don't want to trace over in Paint like usual because it will lose something. Anyone know how to remove the graininess of the lines so i can color?

Try using the "stroke" tool in GIMP.