Art Tutorial: Cleaning Scans in Photoshop

[Kei]

[img]http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/8656/scantutmaincopy.jpg[/img]

[font="Tahoma"][color="#000080"]I hope this is helpful to other wallpaper artists. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.[/color][/font]

[CaNz]

on the pinpoint erasing thing... that sounds intensely difficult.. and as long as there is good contrast between the image i want and the background i usually use the magic eraser tool... im sure you know of it but for others it might save time... it really just deletes all pixles adjacent to and the same within the scale of the same color you clicked on... so in your example it would take out all the white.
its not super precise if colors are closer.. but you can add contrast to the colors to make it better, then shift the contrast back to normal afterwords... (sharpen works well too) the more elaborate the picture the less it works but usually you can mix both methods to save time.

[Gavin]

[size="2"][font="Tahoma"]Very useful information Kei, may have to give it a go at some point beyond my usual fooling around.[/font][/size]

[Kei]

[quote name='CaNz' date='03 July 2010 - 06:07 AM' timestamp='1278151636' post='696427']
on the pinpoint erasing thing... that sounds intensely difficult.. and as long as there is good contrast between the image i want and the background i usually use the magic eraser tool... im sure you know of it but for others it might save time... it really just deletes all pixles adjacent to and the same within the scale of the same color you clicked on... so in your example it would take out all the white.
its not super precise if colors are closer.. but you can add contrast to the colors to make it better, then shift the contrast back to normal afterwords... (sharpen works well too) the more elaborate the picture the less it works but usually you can mix both methods to save time.
[/quote]

[font="Tahoma"][color="#000080"]It's true that the Magic Eraser can save time in some instances, but I've noticed that it has a tendency to degrade the quality of the line work in pictures. It ends up giving the scan a noticeable jagged edge and makes it somewhat unappealing, at least, in my experience, so that's why I didn't mention it. But thanks for putting it out there. [/color][/font]

[CaNz]

[quote name='Kei' date='03 July 2010 - 04:03 PM' timestamp='1278198196' post='696472']
[font="Tahoma"][color="#000080"]It's true that the Magic Eraser can save time in some instances, but I've noticed that it has a tendency to degrade the quality of the line work in pictures. It ends up giving the scan a noticeable jagged edge and makes it somewhat unappealing, at least, in my experience, so that's why I didn't mention it. But thanks for putting it out there. [/color][/font]
[/quote]
i kinda like using it with magnetic lasso... that way you can get close then delete big chunks. the way i normally edit things is get rid of as much excess as i can at one time, then go over it again to pick up the stragglers rather than do it perfect the first time to prevent any stragglers from occurring.

[Japan]

This is very helpful! I did remember doing this sort of thing in Photoshop CS2 over a year or two ago and have forgotten. This is a neat skill to have for not only graphic design but photography as well. I can't wait to try this when I get home.