Reply With Quoteyour link dont work. use tags
Hello, this is my first post here on PJ. So far I think this is a great website, the information I got from just browsing was splendid.
Now for my technical problem:
I draw comics for fun and I would like to have versatile line art. I drew this test sketch (obviously it is lacking in many areas) because my lines only look good when I shrink them.
The drawing is 9"x6", I scanned it at 600 DPI but it only looks good at 3"x2" 300 DPI. Should I be drawing my comics (and artwork in general) a lot bigger?
Last edited by PMerriwether; 05-04-2009 at 09:10 PM.
your link dont work. use tags
Sorry about that, chalk that one up to being new.
comic book industry standard is to draw on 11x17 bristol board type paper... with the actual art being at 10x15 so if you wanted to be like the pros... do that. coarse you'll then need a 11x17 scanner... you should be scanning at actual size of the drawing, with a dpi at least 300. if your scans are looking crappy then i would say you need to adjust some settings or just get a better scanner.
i buy my boards here http://www.bluelinepro.com - they have good prices and the boards are good. with my first order i got like twice as much boards as i expected to just cause it came with a bunch of promotional free stuff.
also... when you say look good at a shrunk size, do mean just on your screen?... cause what looks good on screen doesnt mean it will look good printed. print quality stuff on a computer screen will look humongous at 100% scale...
DPI is technically a printing term. meaning dots per inch.... your screen is not measured in inches with dots per... but rather pixels where 1 equals 1.
read the section "DPI or PPI in digital image files" in this wiki for some info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dots_per_inch
Last edited by angeltread; 05-04-2009 at 09:34 PM.
At full size, 300 DPI (scanned at 600 and then reduced), this is what it looks like. It looks terrible right?
I think the lines look fine; I don't see any problem, as far as scan quality is concerned.
If you want the lines darker or sharper, you could adjust the contrast or the levels, or convert the image to a black and white bitmap.
And if you want to scan an 11"x17" page on a smaller scanner, you can scan it in halves and join them in P'shop.
So you guys are saying my print file should look bad or rough at 100% on a monitor, and my web-posted pictures should be scaled down to about 25%?
Yeah, when you zoom in 100% on print resolution, it'll be gigantic, and you'll be able to see the stair-stepping if it's a bitmap file (if it's antialiased, it'll still look smooth at 100%). For posting on the web, forget about inches; just measure in pixels. Comics posted on the web should be no more than about 900 pixels wide, to accommodate the smallest monitors. Some people even keep it below 800 pixels wide, for the few 800x600 monitors still out there. It doesn't really matter what resolution you set your web images to, since they'll always display at screen resolution anyway; e.g., an image 600 pixels wide at 72 dpi will look the same on screen as an image 600 pixels wide at 1 dpi.Originally Posted by PMerriwether
As for shrinking your images, you should always work 20-30% (at least) larger than print size. Scan at as high a resolution as you can, then shrink (and resample to a lower resolution if necessary). 300 dpi is generally the minimum for print, but with linework I'd say at least 600 if your scanner/computer will let you. You can always convert to grayscale before shrinking and the lines will become antialiased and look fine at 300.
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