Scan From Photoshop Cs4
Scan From Photoshop Cs4
First, open the Photoshop and place the image on the scanner of your scanner software. Crop the image if it doesn’t fit into your scanner. Then scan the image and have a preview of it. Using a desktop scanner to bring printed materials into Adobe Photoshop is as old as Photoshop itself. In fact, one of the reasons Photoshop became the de facto image editor is that Adobe licensed it to be bundled with scanners throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s when designers and publishers were buying their first scanners. For Windows, the downloadable TWAIN plug-in is 32 bit only. For Mac OS, the Photoshop CS5 12.0.4 update includes some TWAIN fixes, and a downloadable TWAIN plug-in solves two more issues: You can scan multiple documents at once, and Photoshop no longer crashes on the second scanning job. How to color a comic in photoshop-scanning and setting up layers There are probably a bunch of ways to color in Photoshop, and other comic books artists might have methods that differ from mine. But this way gives you a good result and is a good starting point for understanding the basics.
Recently a visitor to my View-Master gallery wrote in and asked how I scan my reels and get them ready for publication. So as a public service I’ll go through the steps I take to get an image from a reel to you. Note that I don’t profess to be an expert in this area, and by no means do I claim to have the best technique. I also tend to make things much more complicated than necessary, so keep that in mind.
So here is my humble guide to scanning View-Master reels and getting them cleaned up.
The Hardware
For my reel scanning I use an Epson Perfection 1660 Photo Scanner. It’s a rather old model — at least a decade — but does the job. If memory serves it came with plastic photo scan adapters, but they have long since been lost.
See that opaque strip in the middle of the lid’s underside? That’s the reflective section that enables scanning of the View-Master reel images. I’m sure there are dozens of models that have the same thing and that don’t cost a lot of money.
The Software
I use Photoshop for scanning and post-processing, just because that’s what I’ve used for years and that’s what I’m comfortable with. But as with the scanner itself, there are a ton of choices out there. For this how-to I’m using screenshots of Photoshop CS4.
Let’s go through a scan using one of my New York City reels, a project that’s still in progress as of this posting.
The Steps
1. Place the reel on the scanner bed, so that some of the pictures are lined up under the opaque filmstrip adapter. Unless you have a larger adapter you won’t be able to fit all of them. It shouldn’t matter if the reel is facing up or down, but I always have mine print side down out of habit.
2. In Photoshop initiate a scan/import process. Here’s what it looks like in CS4 (selecting the installed Epson software):
3. From the Epson scanner interface, I use the following settings:
- Document source: TPU: Pos. Film
- Image Type: Color Photo
- Destination: Screen/Web
- Resolution: 1200 dpi
Remember that View-Master images are not film negatives, but transparent film prints. As for the resolution, I find that 1200 dpi allows me to get a large enough image to be useful. Anything more and the file size becomes a bit unwieldy. But if you want to blow up an image you’ll want to go higher.
Note in this preview window that I only got three distinct pictures (remember that a View-Master picture is made up of two separate pieces of film). So to capture all seven on a reel you’ll need to repeat this process.
4. Now into post-processing! Align and crop the scanned images to your liking. I’m not going to tell you how to use your image processing software, but I will note that you may want to apply some curve leveling to account for your scanner. Also watch out for proper alignment. It’s easy to work on a slide only to discover it’s backwards — this can happen in slides without lettering in the picture — so remember to compare to the original reel as seen through a viewer.
Here are two scans from a New York slide (Coney Island beach). The first has no processing applied, and the second had adjustments made in the levels and shadow/highlights. I also added a sharpening filter. Remember that this is half-century old picture less than an inch wide, so don’t expect to be wowed.
And that’s pretty much it!
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HOW TO COLOR A COMIC IN PHOTOSHOP-SCANNING AND SETTING UP LAYERS
There are probably a bunch of ways to color in Photoshop, and other comic books artists might have methods that differ from mine. But this way gives you a good result and is a good starting point for understanding the basics.
You don’t have to be a Photoshop guru to get good results either. I’m probably only utilizing .00001% of what PS can do, and I’ve been using it for a over a decade. I just use it to do what I need to get done. It’s a tool.
1) SCAN IN YOUR DRAWING.
First, get your linework in Photoshop. Scan it in at 400dpi for grayscale, or 600dpi for Black and White (your scanner software may say “Lineart”.) It depends on how well your scanner handles the art. If you scanned it in grayscale, then go to Image>Adjustments>Threshold and play with the numbers until you get some nice black lines. I usually set it around 163, but it varies either higher or lower depending on how fine your lines are.
If you scanned at 600dpi B&W, go to Image>Mode and select CMYK. (Note: You’ll have to select grayscale first to get it out of Bitmap mode. Then click Image>Mode again to select CMYK. I don’t know why we don’t have the technology to go straight from Bitmap to CMYK. Way to fail, science.)
CMYK is for print, and even though I do a webcomic, I ultimately want to go to print with it. If you’re doing an image that’s for web only you can select RGB.
At this point you should have some lineart that’s all ready to color:
NOTE: At this point go to Image>Image Size and change the resolution to 300 dpi. This will save you some computer processing time and 300dpi is good for color printing.
2) SET UP YOUR LAYERS.
I use layers as the backbone of my coloring process. Some people use channels, I think, but I never quite got the hang of that. Think of layers as transparent sheets of paper that you, well, layer over your art. That’s the simplest way to think of them. You can change what these transparent sheets do to the layers underneath. They might make everything underneath darker, or lighter, or give it a hue, etc. Here’s the bare bones of coloring a comic with flat colors.
Adobe Photoshop Cs4
I always want the line art to be the top layer set to multiply. Right now your lineart is your background layer. Right-click on that layer and select “LAYER FROM BACKGROUND”
This will let you move that layer to the top. In order to have the stuff you’re about to do underneath it be visible, set that layer’s blending mode to MULTIPLY. The drop-down menu just above the layers should say NORMAL right now. Click it to see the options.
Scan From Photoshop Cs4 Software
At this point go ahead and lock the lineart layer. (It’s the padlock icon right above it.) This will keep you from accidentally coloring on that layer.
Photoshop Cs4 Trial
One more thing to do and you’ll be all ready to start coloring. It’s time to create the layer you’ll be doing your flat colors on. Go to the layer menu and create a new layer.
Once you do this, that layer will be on top, probably labeled “Layer 1”. Just click and drag it so it’s underneath the lineart layer.
Once that’s done your layers should look like this:
Cs4 Photoshop Free Download
From here you’re all ready to start coloring. Next time — coloring!
Scan From Photoshop Cs4