Scanning fine art help
November 30, 2014 4:24 PM Subscribe
I'm helping a friend with scanning her family's artwork from the 40s and 50s. Can you walk me through the best practices and equipment?
My friend's family were artists and she has black and white drawings in pen and ink, pencil drawings, pastels, paintings. She wants to scan them for posterity, but it is also possible that some of the scans may be used in a commercially printed book. She also may want to sell enlargements as prints eventually. She is worried that the artwork will disintegrate as we scan because the paper is very old and crumbly so we only want to scan these once if possible. We want to know what the professionals would be doing in this case so....
* What dpi should we be scanning at?
* Do we scan in line art mode for the pen and ink drawings? Pencil also?
* When we scan the color drawings, should we be in cmyk mode?
* Is it ok that I am just scanning and not doing any color correcting along the way? Will a professional be able to do this later?
* Her scanner is maybe 7 years old and was top of the line at the time. Is there an advantage to upgrading her scanner? If so, any recommendations?
Any other tips, tricks or recommendations welcome. She doesn't want to send the job out to a scanning service so we just want to do the best possible job we can. Thanks!
My friend's family were artists and she has black and white drawings in pen and ink, pencil drawings, pastels, paintings. She wants to scan them for posterity, but it is also possible that some of the scans may be used in a commercially printed book. She also may want to sell enlargements as prints eventually. She is worried that the artwork will disintegrate as we scan because the paper is very old and crumbly so we only want to scan these once if possible. We want to know what the professionals would be doing in this case so....
* What dpi should we be scanning at?
* Do we scan in line art mode for the pen and ink drawings? Pencil also?
* When we scan the color drawings, should we be in cmyk mode?
* Is it ok that I am just scanning and not doing any color correcting along the way? Will a professional be able to do this later?
* Her scanner is maybe 7 years old and was top of the line at the time. Is there an advantage to upgrading her scanner? If so, any recommendations?
Any other tips, tricks or recommendations welcome. She doesn't want to send the job out to a scanning service so we just want to do the best possible job we can. Thanks!
Best answer: 1/ Highest possible DPI. Always. Disk space is very cheap. You can always make smaller files out of large ones; not other way though.
2 & 3/ Scan in full colour. 24 or even 48 bit if you can. Save files as TIFF or similar file format that either does not compress or offers lossless compression. Not JPEG.
4/ Just create the best scans you can. Process later by all means.
5/ It depends what you mean by 'top of the line' really. If you're talking about a professional drum scanner costing in the $10s of thousands, then yes, it will be fine. Otherwise, it will depend on the scanner. It might be ok.
Also, I have photographed artworks and that works well if you can set it up properly and is usually easiest for larger works. I've used an easel with the camera on a tripod. Outside in the shade on a sunny day is easiest if you don't have lights. Don't use flash. Do use the best camera and lens you can get your hands on and shoot RAW, not JPEG.
If you really want to produce high quality digital output from these artworks, which seems only fair if you're intending to sell them, it does take a bit of skill and equipment to do well. Be prepared to do tests and adjust your workflow as a result. If the works are so fragile and are actually worth something, I would consider putting it in the hands of someone who is familiar with the job and let them handle it.
posted by mewsic at 8:54 PM on November 30, 2014
2 & 3/ Scan in full colour. 24 or even 48 bit if you can. Save files as TIFF or similar file format that either does not compress or offers lossless compression. Not JPEG.
4/ Just create the best scans you can. Process later by all means.
5/ It depends what you mean by 'top of the line' really. If you're talking about a professional drum scanner costing in the $10s of thousands, then yes, it will be fine. Otherwise, it will depend on the scanner. It might be ok.
Also, I have photographed artworks and that works well if you can set it up properly and is usually easiest for larger works. I've used an easel with the camera on a tripod. Outside in the shade on a sunny day is easiest if you don't have lights. Don't use flash. Do use the best camera and lens you can get your hands on and shoot RAW, not JPEG.
If you really want to produce high quality digital output from these artworks, which seems only fair if you're intending to sell them, it does take a bit of skill and equipment to do well. Be prepared to do tests and adjust your workflow as a result. If the works are so fragile and are actually worth something, I would consider putting it in the hands of someone who is familiar with the job and let them handle it.
posted by mewsic at 8:54 PM on November 30, 2014
Also not a pro scanner but I have scanned line drawings and photo material many times.
The question of DPI is best answered with a rule of thumb: you want the highest you can consistently sustain over the course of the collection--but no less than 300 dpi. I typically scan my pieces at twice that resolution (and have scanned my fair share of things at 1200dpi). I am almost always happy that I scanned at a greater resolution than the minimum. The physical dimensions of the pieces and your computational capacities are also factors.
I always scan as cmyk photo (not line art). I always scan to TIFF format (please not JPG). I never do in-scan or immediately post-scan adjustments--software like Adobe Lightroom is great for batch processing that kind of thing. And I find that doing them all at the end helps me balance whole collection and individual adjustments better--cohesion across images with each image looking its individual best is my goal. A seven year old, former topic the line scanner, if still in good working order should be fine.
posted by safetyfork at 9:01 PM on November 30, 2014
The question of DPI is best answered with a rule of thumb: you want the highest you can consistently sustain over the course of the collection--but no less than 300 dpi. I typically scan my pieces at twice that resolution (and have scanned my fair share of things at 1200dpi). I am almost always happy that I scanned at a greater resolution than the minimum. The physical dimensions of the pieces and your computational capacities are also factors.
I always scan as cmyk photo (not line art). I always scan to TIFF format (please not JPG). I never do in-scan or immediately post-scan adjustments--software like Adobe Lightroom is great for batch processing that kind of thing. And I find that doing them all at the end helps me balance whole collection and individual adjustments better--cohesion across images with each image looking its individual best is my goal. A seven year old, former topic the line scanner, if still in good working order should be fine.
posted by safetyfork at 9:01 PM on November 30, 2014
Best answer: ~What dpi should we be scanning at?
As high as possible, especially for line drawings.
~Do we scan in line art mode for the pen and ink drawings? Pencil also?
No. Line Art mode is little more than a high-contrast mode. Using it will often lose fine detail and harden the line work.
~When we scan the color drawings, should we be in cmyk mode?
RGB. You can convert to CMYK when you need to prep the art for reproduction.
~Is it ok that I am just scanning and not doing any color correcting along the way? Will a professional be able to do this later?
Yeah, that's ok. Yes, a pro can do the color correction later. However, the accuracy of the correction will depend on whether the person doing the correction has access to the actual art, for reference.
~Her scanner is maybe 7 years old and was top of the line at the time. Is there an advantage to upgrading her scanner? If so, any recommendations?
It depends on the scanner. Is it a high-dollar machine? Or a $75 "home office" cheapie?
Another question I have is how large is the scanner bed? Is it large enough to scan the entire piece of art without having to do multiple passes and then piecing the scans together in Photoshop? That rarely works out for the best.
One thing you might want to think about...There are still printers and graphic supply companies that do large-format scanning. You might think about looking up one of these and see what it would cost to take the work to them. It'll be done right, at high quality without any trial and error.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:09 AM on December 1, 2014
As high as possible, especially for line drawings.
~Do we scan in line art mode for the pen and ink drawings? Pencil also?
No. Line Art mode is little more than a high-contrast mode. Using it will often lose fine detail and harden the line work.
~When we scan the color drawings, should we be in cmyk mode?
RGB. You can convert to CMYK when you need to prep the art for reproduction.
~Is it ok that I am just scanning and not doing any color correcting along the way? Will a professional be able to do this later?
Yeah, that's ok. Yes, a pro can do the color correction later. However, the accuracy of the correction will depend on whether the person doing the correction has access to the actual art, for reference.
~Her scanner is maybe 7 years old and was top of the line at the time. Is there an advantage to upgrading her scanner? If so, any recommendations?
It depends on the scanner. Is it a high-dollar machine? Or a $75 "home office" cheapie?
Another question I have is how large is the scanner bed? Is it large enough to scan the entire piece of art without having to do multiple passes and then piecing the scans together in Photoshop? That rarely works out for the best.
One thing you might want to think about...There are still printers and graphic supply companies that do large-format scanning. You might think about looking up one of these and see what it would cost to take the work to them. It'll be done right, at high quality without any trial and error.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:09 AM on December 1, 2014
One final comment: how many pieces need to be scanned? In case it's not obvious, scanning these could turn into a substantial amount of work and time. If you've got more than 50 or 100 pieces, I suspect that the cost of farming the work out to a professional outfit will be worth it.
posted by doctor tough love at 10:25 AM on December 1, 2014
posted by doctor tough love at 10:25 AM on December 1, 2014
This thread is closed to new comments.
I suspect that if you google around you'll find resources that could assist you with this - offhand, the lighting is probably going to be a bit tricky, especially if you're stitching multiple images together.
If you try to DIY it with a camera, make sure that you take the pictures in RAW (ie, uncompressed) mode with the maximum bits-per-pixel the camera will give you.
Even if the artwork is B&W, I suspect you should capture everything in some kind of color mode. I don't know what kind of equipment / software you have, but if you have some kind of choice between RGB and CMYK, go for RGB. CMYK is a colorspace that is used for printing, and I believe there are colors in RGB space that won't map to CMYK, which might be an issue when you're scanning.
I've fooled with this kind of things a number of times on an ad hoc basis - again, I'd love to hear from a professional.
posted by doctor tough love at 8:37 PM on November 30, 2014