Digital Scanning for Fine Art and Photography

The wonderful thing about digital images is their infinite promise...the promise of infinite copies, that is! As long as that file exists, your work of art or treasured photo can be altered, touched up, re-sized and re-printed as many times as you desire.

We recently scanned a Persian scroll that our client told us was over a thousand years old. It was a secret map signed with name-stamps by more than ten people. Once we got the high-resolution file we printed it on Satin Cloth (see last week's post). Now the customer can display the print and keep the original safe.

Digitizing your images

The best way to make a digital copy of an original image is using a scanner. It is also possible to use a digital camera, but that's a little trickier. Flatbed scanners are pretty common and can produce good quality scans that are editable and printable. The process of scanning is quite easy, but there are a couple of tips that will help you to get good results.

Tip: Output Type

Scanners usually have a couple of different settings for how they will see an image. This is called the 'output type' and you need to set it before you hit scan. You usually have a choice between “millions of colors” color palettes of various sizes, gray scale and black and white (sometimes called 'line art'). Millions of colors works best for photos and artwork, and 'line art' works for scanning text documents. This setting creates an effect that looks like an photocopy.

Tip: Set the resolution

All scanners can copy at various resolutions. The higher the resolution, the larger the file, and the more information the scanner will pick up. So if you want to increase the size of the image, it is a good idea to scan at a higher resolution, say 600 dpi.

-72 dpi (ppi) is the size of most web images.

-300 dpi is print standard for many types of print media.

So if you are not looking to increase the size of something, 300 dpi is enough. There is no need to make a meticulously large and hard to handle file. Especially since often the thing you are scanning does not have any more information that 300 dpi.

Tip: Adjust the white point

Most newer and higher quality flatbed scanners have an option to set the white point on the scan before capturing, this is like setting the exposure on your digital camera. It allows you to optimize the image your scanner captures by aligning the darkest part of you image to true black, and the whites part of your image to true white. Basically, you can do this by using the “levels” tool in the scanner interface. This shows you a box with a histogram of the distribution of white and black in you image. By adjusting the whitest and blackest points available to match the lightest and darkest points in your image, you can force the scan to expand the tonal range of the image. This is a little complicated but worth it. For a more much more detailed explanation see here.

High Resolution Scanners

Some pictures are too large or too detailed to scan using a desktop flatbed scanner. If you want to get a good, reproducible image of original art work, especially large paintings with lots of detail or texture in the paint, an ordinary scanner will not be able to give good results. Here at USA On Canvas, we use a Cruse brand scanner for fine art reproduction. This is a large flatbed scanner that can scan objects up to a depth of 4 inches and 42x78 inches square. This scanner allows us to produce giclees on canvas that get as close to the original as is possible with digital technology. With this service, artists can produce prints of an original, which means more people can enjoy the work, and the artist can make a little more money!

We also have an Epsom Perfection Scanner available to our clients for scanning prints, and especially slides and negatives. Negatives and slides provide great resolution and can be blown up to surprising sizes. So looks for treasures in yours or your parents old boxes of photos. you might be surprised at what you have!

Scanners are a great tool for artists. They facilitate all kinds of printing and editing options, and they are essential if you want to display your work on the web. Some artists even use scanners to produce work, using a technique called scanography, but that will be the subject of my next post.

Durable Delicacy, Satin Cloth Printing

Satin cloth is a new material developed by Lexjet for the giclee process. It has a very smooth texture which does not conflict with the fine detail in your image. Some people describe it's look and feel as being like vellum. It's translucency allows for highly creative and beautiful mounting options. It has many of the advantages of canvas, and offers new possibilities for displaying your art. It can be sewn, stretched or hung like canvas, and it has even been hung outside!

Satin cloth and canvas printing have various pros and cons. We have created this chart comparing them:

attributes	Lexjet Water-Resistant Satin Cloth Giclee	Canvas Giclee
texture	Smooth texture, good for capturing fine detail and sharpness. Vellum-like feel	Woven texture, good for softening images and masking defects, traditional canvas feel
Color response	Excellent. Accepts high levels of ink saturation. PreLume technology provides brighter white points.	Excellent. High levels of ink saturation and bright white point.
opacity	90% (translucent)	Greater that 99%
weight	Very light-weigh (130g per sq meter)	Heavy (410 g per sq meter)
Stretch-mounting?	yes	yes
Water resistance	Very high	High

Mounting Options:

Lexjet water-resistant satin cloth is stretchable like canvas, and can be mounted for wall hanging. Other mounting options offer the possibility of taking advantage of the material's transparency. Mounting using back-lighting works very well with this material, because the smooth weave of Satin Cloth acts as a natural diffuser, making the whole image glow with light.

Window Display:

Many photographers and artists are using Lexjet satin cloth to create banners, examples can be found here on the Lexjet blog. This could be done by using poster hangers like these:

or these,

OR by sewing a pocket into the top and bottom of the cloth, and inserting a dowel to suspend the banner from.

The satin cloth is water resistant, so consider using it in outdoor applications as well. Here is story from the Lexjet web page that attests to the durability of this material

“ [the artist] took the [satin cloth] screen down to the beach for a marketing shoot, he placed it in the water and shot it. Then, the screen tipped over into the surf and was soaked with salt water. He took it home, rinsed it off with a garden hose and left it standing outdoors exposed to the elements for two months. The colours remained totally colourfast.”

Commercial Banner Display

Another mounting option is using a commercial banner displays like these, which can be back-lit, or use the ambient light in the room or outdoor area to show off the Satin Cloth's transparency. Displays like these are available here.

the Lexjet blog has a great post on innovative business ideas using this material.

Light-boxes

the last option I will talk about is something we are very exited about at USA on canvas. The qualities of satin cloth mean that we are able to create light-boxes with custom-printed images. A light-box is a framed box that with light mounted inside, and a translucent image on the front. They are often used commercially and by professional artists, but Satin Cloth printing allows them to be created affordability for home decor.

A Light-box turns your image into a creative ambient lighting solution, as well as highlighting the particular beauty of your image. Back-lighting increases the presence and richness of saturated colors, it lends an ethereal quality to soft or misty images, and it makes skin really glow in portraits.

Cost comparison: Satin Cloth Mounting Options

for a 20x30 print ($61 printing cost)

mounting	Do we do it?	Cost	Advantage
Stretch mounting	yes	$62.00	Finished and, ready to hang. Beautifully textured fine wall art.
Poster Hangers	no	$16.95	Simple to order and install, can be hung on wall or window for natural light back-lit effect.
Commercial banners	no	$49.00	Professional displays for trade shows or point of sale displays
Light Boxes	No right now: check back soon	$250-300	Original and beautiful wall are and lighting solution. Makes any photo come alive.

Digital Coloring Book.

Here at USA On Canvas we see a lot of beautiful photographs, both professional and amateur, but we also see some really inspiring and innovative digital art. Program like PhotoShop allow artist to create on screen, and this has many advantages. You can test ideas and concepts without wasting resources, and you can make several versions easily. Unlike physical media, you never have to experience that stomach-dropping sensation you get when hours of work is ruined by a single brush stroke. As a painter friend of mine lamented, water color does not have an undo button.

PhotoShop can be a daunting program to learn, but it is very rewarding. Recently, with the help of the amazing catalog of public domain black and white images available here and a few simple PhotoShop tools, I created a little project that is pretty much as fun as coloring books used to be when you where 5. As a bonus, it can help you get familiar with the PhotoShop toolbox.

Step 1) download a file.

I picked this one: the files with file names ending in .svg.hi.png‎ because they are transparent, which will make things easier later.

Step 2) Open the file in PhotoShop.

If PhotoShop shows the drawing on a blue and white checkered background, this is good! If not. It will be a bit harder to work with.

2a) If the image has a white background, get the magic wand tool, set the tolerance to 1, click on the white area and when the selection is made, press delete. You may have to unlock the layer first. There there might be several white areas separated by black outline. Select each one and delete the white

Step 3) Make the image the size you want (ctrl+alt I)

Step 4) Use the “paint bucket” tool to start colouring! Pick the colour you want using the colour picker, and fill in areas with colour.

Step 5) If the color leaks into an area you don't want it to, don't panic! Press “undo” (ctrl-Z) and then use the magnifying glass to find the hole in the outline. Once you find it, use the paint brush tool to complete the outline.

Step 6) Keep colouring!

Step 7) You will notice that there are some white areas that are too small to paint with the paint bucket tool. Once you have filled in all you have the patience for, you can use this (slightly complicated) trick to colour all of the remaining white areas in one go.

First, pick a colour. You only get one, so choose well.

Next, make a square using the rectangle tool that covers

the whole image. The shape will automatically be placed on it's own layer. Drag this layer under the layer with the picture.

Select the layer with the picture. Us the magic wand tool to select the area around the outside of the picture.

Select the layer with the

solid color. Use the eraser tool to erase all the color in the selection. While a selection is active on a layer, the eraser will only erase within that selection.

Step 8) for a final touch, use the paint bucket and the gradient tool to ad some color to the background.

Don't forget, you can make your digital art into a beautiful wall piece by printing it using the Giclee canvas printing process!