Thursday, December 8, 2011

What software or scanner type can I get to transfer original art to disc?

My gf is an artist and I want to help her put her work on disc so that it can be printed. Most of her work is larger than 11x17. Any ideas out there?|||As an artist who scans his work to put on the internet, I must say the best way I have found is by using a digital camera. As long as you have enough pixels, you will get plenty of resolution on the finished image (I use a 6m pixel camera - Fuji F701.)





The first important thing is lighting. If you have a flash then this will reflect from the canvas (or whatever surface it is) and give an inaccurate picture. If taking indoors then turn off the flash, but you will need to put the camera on something stable like a tripod or table because of the long exposure. The best way I have found is to place the art on the floor outside where there is plenty of light and photograph downwards. Be careful that strong sunlight doesn't give a similar reflection to the flash.





Once you have your photo, there will probably be a bit of background that you do not want. Use image editing software (My favourite it Paint Shop Pro) to crop the image exactly. You can also use the software to adjust the brightness and contrast of the picture to most closely resemble the real life piece.





I have found that by using this method I get a much clearer image than when using a scanner.





Some examples of my art photographed in exactly this way can be seen at my website www.jamespickard.com. These images have been scaled down for the internet but the originals are very high resolution and have been printed very sucessfully.|||for print, you should have it saved at a resolution of between 250-300 dpi. You will obviously need an 11 x 17" scanner to get the job done. as for a program to put it on a disc, roxio is a fairly easy program to work

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