Talk about scanning… ^_^
I kept wondering what my first post should be about, and since scanning seems a hot topic in the blog, I figure I try my best at making a general “tutorial” about scanning black and white artwork. I hope it will be useful but if there are any questions or things that need clarifying, please let me know and I’m more then happy to help.
There is a common misconception when it comes to scanning traditional line art or an actual black and white illustration for print. A lot of the artists I was involved with are under the impression that greyscale or colour settings are the best way to go. That might be valid for art that is destined to be shared via the internet or thru other virtual mediums, but when it comes to printing, the best way to go is pure black and white. Some scanners classify this setting as line art; some do it as black and white (BW) while others name it BMP. In case your scanner has some other way of calling this setting, I will now list the most important attribute that makes it very easy to recognize. In the preview window, when you scan as pure black and white, the preview will look very pixelated, scattered, and all around ugly. Do not be fooled as the actual scan will look nothing like that.
*it will look something like that (or even worse) in preview*
*random eye-candy*
Now, one other important thing about scanning black and white is that while it will indeed save you having to level or actually do any tweaking on the file, some details might be lost unless you scan at a higher dpi. So I will recommend you scan the files at 600dpi but you can go as low as 300dpi depending on what your computer can handle. Most digital printers will produce best quality when they use 600dpi pure black and white scans, as opposed to 300 dpi.
For professional press the files sent to the printers are usually 1200dpi. Do not worry, you shouldn’t bother doing your work at 1200dpi, not unless you have a powerful computer and don’t mind doing some extra work. The truth is that because you are working with black and white, you can get away with doing 600 dpi because, at the end of the day, you or your editor can rescale your file in BMP mode, therefore preserving all details intact.
When working with Black and White files, you must understand one very important thing, that is, pixels = good! Do not be scared if you zoom at 100%+ and you are able to see the pixels. That is a good thing and proves that once printed the lines will be extremely crisp. Here is a close-up example of a panel line art from Night and Day:
pixels=good
Talking about pixels and how great they are, I will also like to point out that, if the line art needs tweaking in Photoshop after it was scanned, all redrawing should be done with the pencil tool not the brush tool, and also made sure that your colours are defaulted to pure black and white (you can do that by pressing D).
The BMP mode (found in Photoshop under Image/Mode/BMP) is a great tool when it comes to creating black and white art for printing purpose. It can ensure you get crisp lines and also, if you prefer using gradients and greys instead of actual tones, you can even use the different setting of the BMP transformation to transform your shading into tones.
This is recommended for people that do not use traditional tones or any digital toning software, but still wish to have crisp shading in their prints. When you print a greyscale file to a black and white (digital or press) printer, the machine only uses one colour of ink so, all greys and any colour information is transformed into black by default. There is no way to control what gets printed unless you provide the correct one colour information in your files. Now, you can play with the different BMP settings and experiment, depending on what type of effect you wish to convey in your illustration and thru your shading. Just remember, you are limited to what you can do as well as the amount of layers you can have when you are in BMP mode (BMP will flatten all layers and only uses one layer), so when you want to edit something, I recommend you do it in greyscale mode.(when going into greyscale, use ration 1)
For people who wish to use tones, I can recommend the use of traditional Deleter tones, which are not overly expensive (the jr. types) and also have a great variety to them.
If you are on a budget, or you prefer using digital toning, then my recommended program is PowerTone 3. Power Tone 3 is a plug-in by Celsys that can be attached to your Photoshop and used as a filter. Unfortunately, the only version available is in Japanese, but lucky enough the software is very straight forward and easy to understand so it can be used without the need of knowing Japanese.
*pretty power tone box, click to visit the site*
That’s all for scanning. I better stop before I write a whole novel. ^^; I’ll do my best to cover other technical aspects of manga making in my future posts, so if you would like to know about anything in particular, feel free to comment with your suggestions.
December 7th, 2006 at 4:35 am
Uwaaa! you great with explaining tutorials! *heart*
Very useful information for our fellow artists here, especially the ones that are new to this kind of more professional editing.
I might add the use of a semi-pro or professional tablet here, just like the Wacoms, to add that finishing touch to your digital screentones ^_~ *hugs her Intuos3*
December 7th, 2006 at 7:59 am
Akito-sama~~~ *cling* Ah, I didn’t know half of that until you told me (through IM)… I seem to have been doing everything wrong! To think that the only reason I don’t scan in b/w is the ugly preview, aside from the marks on the flipside of the used paper. Also, I edit my inks in PS with the brush tool. =___=;;; (Perhaps I will just use… Threshold…) So this is really informative for me! Gah~ I leave my pages to you! ;___; Thank you very much for PT3 — saved me a lot of trouble! Wonderful tool, indeed!
December 7th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
Hey, hey, waitaminute!
If you scan at 600dpi, and then upscale to 1200dpi, you don’t get back any of the detail that went away by scanning at 600dpi. (The difference between 600 and 1200 at first glance isn’t that much, though, so I don’t know how many people would notice. 300dpi is noticeable.) Please don’t let people think you can make the pixels come back by upscaling! This causes sooo much sorrow in the printing biz!
dry ice: there’s nothing wrong with using the brush tool in PS to do your artwork, you can use anything you want to create it. When you are finally ready to be done, then you can switch it out to two colors. Save along the way in the photoshop format at high rez - that’s much more forgiving of mistakes! (I always work in grayscale, because its easier for me to see what I’m doing, and export at the end.)
December 7th, 2006 at 2:20 pm
Thank you Lara and Dry Ice.
Lara you are right, maybe you will help me cover digital inking in the future and we can give Wacom a good plug-in for being so brilliant!
Dry Ice, you should not worry about your works, we experimented with the files and made ourselves a good plan on how to handle it for print. So don’t change what we decided since that works best with your art.
Sylvia, I do not know who you are, but you are funny. ^__^
It has been a while since somebody misinterpreted my words then came to tell me how to do my job, it really never gets old. First off, I did not claim to have magical powers that make pixels come back. All I said is that if you resize from 600 dpi to 1200 dpi in duotone mode, you will indeed preserve every single pixel that was in the 600 dpi file while upping the dpi to 1200. Second, I do not know who you are in the printing business, but if you were indeed somebody with basic knowledge you would know that, if anybody scans artwork at 300 dpi black and white then they will indeed lose more detail then if they scan at 600 dpi.
I state clearly that they should work on greyscale, I would be rather silly to say different since, well, you can barely do anything in black and white as it locks the layers and limits your possibilities in Photoshop. There is an issue when retouching your black and white artwork with the brush tool as opposed to the pencil tool, and that issue is the anti alias of the brush tool. It doesn’t just stand out from the rest of the line art (who now has no anti alias as it was scanned in black and white), but it also stores colour information that builds to a larger file size. But I am sure you know all that since you come off so strong, I’m not lecturing, just reminding you some things that might had slipped your mind when you posted here.
December 7th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
Sexy example image *o*) Thanks so much for putting this up~~~~ It will deffently be a good bookmark to have saved.
( Thanks for clarifying alot of things also~~~~It will deffently help with my lineart *O* oh we learn so much from you~~~thankyou!) I’ll deffently try 600DPI a go and see if my computer can handle it haha.
*chuus — then scrolls up and stares at the sexy boya image* (*_____*)
December 7th, 2006 at 2:38 pm
I will help, you know I am all ready when it comes helping the fellow artists ^_^
Of course, when I finish this darn chapter first… XD
December 7th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
Ah, I can still do the same, then! *___* Akito-sama rabuuu~~~ *cling*
December 7th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
first i get scanner, questions later XD
i read and understood, hooo my english suprise me lately XD ;
*hugs*
December 8th, 2006 at 12:01 am
Areku, try 600dpi lineart and then turn the bmp scan into greyscale and use greyscale when toning instead of RGB or CMYK files. Greyscale is a smaler size usually, plus as long as you keep your tone mocks on separate layers, you can use just one grey colour for the mocks, that way you limit the colour information that gets stored.
Lara, you’re an angel! Can’t wait to do the digital inking tutorial now! KYAA!
DryIce, your style is perfect, it can be adapted for anything without any loss, you really have a good thing going so I say experiment with new techniques, but don’t worry if it’s not for you, what you have is brilliant and your way of doing the shades and inks really does help set up the mood of Venom Fang.*clings back*
Goku, can’t wait till you get the scanner…If you want we can look over what your curent scanner can do… ;__; RABUUU!*hugs*
December 21st, 2006 at 8:04 am
Great blog!!
I use Mangastudio for doing manga and previously Comicworks. Scanner is not essential if you work directly with a tablet!
December 22nd, 2006 at 12:19 am
Yeap, I prefer to do my inks digitally as well, saves me having to clean up after myself…^^;