[Abbadon74]

Hey gang. Lately I've been experimenting with doing linework that utilizes gray tone values rather than strict lineart. On the board, I use smudge sticks to get the tonal variation I'm going for, but when I scan it, it just comes out looking very rough and hard. None of the subtle tones seem to make it through, and it also looks very grainy. I've got an Epson 836XL scanner, which is supposed to be a very good scanner. I just can't get it to capture the line quality I'm hoping for. It looks great on paper, just not in the scan.

Does anyone have any thoughts or experience with scanner settings?

Thanks

-B

[henrik]

Check your scanner settings. Sounds like you're using some kind of "black and white" setting. Change it to "grayscale" or even "photo" quality.
Grayscale tends to work well for pencil drawings. Make sure you scan at 300dpi or so, you can always shrink.
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[math]

300 dpi? 3000
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quit pro quo

[Thr3ddy]

Calbibrate your scanner every now and then, and use a high DPI for scanning. I go from 1200 dpi. No lower than that if you want to capture every stroke and grain.
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Eddy Luten - EddyLuten.com

[Pat]

I scan a lot of pencil material as well. Extremely subtle tonal differences are difficult to capture in the best of circumstances, especially with older 24-bit hardware or even on newer "large" flatbeds. I think part of the difficulty you're experiencing is that larger scanners are just not as capable as the smaller flatbeds at capturing tone and detail --I'm guessing a design compromise for the size. I've owned upwards of 7 scanners in varying sizes and brands and always achieved the best detail on the smaller ones.

In any event, here's a few tips that might help you coax a little more detail out of your scanner:

1) Scan your pencil drawings in as a full color image. This gives you 3X the data over a simple grayscale image, it's like oversampling. The more data you get the better off you are when you try to adjust the image in Photoshop.

2) Purchase or make a grayscale tone ramp for inclusion with the scan. Lots of photography store sell these. Scan it along with the image. A lot of scanners have an auto-whitepoint/auto-contrast which will overexpose subtle tone. By including the tone ramp the scanner will not truncate the tonal range.

3) Some scanning software allows you to access the auto-whitepoint/auto-contrast features. Turn them off if possible. Always try to get raw scans whenever possible because Photoshop is far more capable at adjusting the values.

4) Always make sure your scanner is set to best quality. Sounds simple, but it's often overlooked. Also make sure it's warmed up if it requires it. A lot of scanners produce better scans once they've been scanning for a while.

5) For smaller drawings, scan them in your scanner's "sweet spot". You can find the sweet spot by scanning a variety of flat tonal images of the entire bed and then analyzing the scans in Photoshop. Scanners have difficulty with extremely light tones and extremely dark ones. Use the levels command to over or underexpose the scan. Those areas in "non-sweet spots" clip badly, as if there is a lot of detail missing. Areas with better preserved detail are your sweet spots.

6) learn to stich. I almost never use large flatbeds anymore. Sometimes you just have to, but a lot of images can be "stiched" togther in Photoshop. It takes some patience, good registration and a good eye for color balancing, but you can often times get better results that way. If quality is super-important take your image to a service bureau with a drum scanner.


Lastly, my strange method for capturing more tonal detail:

If tonal range is more important to you than image detail there's also another option. It's kinda weird, but try scanning the image 4 or 5 times and compositing them on top of each other in declining levels of opacity. Obviously, registration is an issue. Try to keep the opacity set to mathmatically advantageous settings ie. a two layer composite means the bottom is 100% and the top is 50%. A three layer composite would be 100/50/25 and so on and so forth. You'll lose detail, but you may preserve enough tonal information in the trouble areas for one solid Photoshop adjustment. Often times this composite can be used in conjunction with another scan of the same image to "pad" the color.

Best of luck,

-Pat