I've been getting better at scanning my drawings and paintings that don't fit on my scanner bed in multiple scans and putting them back together in Photoshop. As always, this is just how I do it and it works for me.
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The weight of the paper or board is pretty important at this step. This drawing is on a nice heavy Stonehenge paper that's sturdy enough to straighten back out after it's bent slightly on the scanner, but not so heavy that it refuses to bend at all. If it's so rigid that it won't bend so you can at least get one corner flat on the scanner, you'd probably have to set up lights and photograph it instead.
Here I've removed the weight and slid - not rotated! - the paper to scan the bottom half. Putting the lid flat allows you to slide the paper straight across to do the next scan. I've tried rotating the paper to scan the different sides and something always ends up looking wrong - the color shifts, the scanner's lights cast a different shadow so the texture looks different, etc. So to make the next steps simple, I keep the paper facing the same direction.
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I put the weights back on, and scan.
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Side note: the option up at the top in the toolbar to "Show Transform Controls" with this tool is super convenient. You don't have to go through the menu to transform/rotate the current layer. Just watch the arrows as you mouse over the edges of the image or you accidentally rotate when you're just trying to move. To resize, pick a corner and hold the Shift key to keep the layer in proportion, then double click on the image or click the checkmark button that shows up in the toolbar. To cancel, click the circle-with-a-slash button. I swear it sounds more complicated than it is :)
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Now click the little button at the bottom of the Layers palette that says "Add layer mask." This is how I blend one layer into the other so you can't tell that I had to fake it with two scans. Once you have a layer mask, select the Brush tool. The foreground and background colors are set to black and white. Choose a large, soft-edged brush (you might have to run the little slider from the Brush Preset option in the toolbar to get one big enough) and click the "swap back-and-forth" arrow next to the foreground/background colors (or press x, at least on my Mac). Once you have white selected as the foreground color, you can start painting. But you're not painting, you're just choosing to stop showing some of the layer. It's like using the Erase tool without ever losing any of the original layer. You can "paint" some of the layer away on the Layer Mask, then switch to the opposite color and "paint" it back in. That back-and-forth is really important on my drawings, because there will be parts that I want to show from the top layer and parts that I want to be visible from the bottom layer.
Here's what this area looks like when it's finished.
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As with anything, the layer mask sounds weird and complicated but you'll see how it works if you try it. It's great for making any part of a layer transparent without losing any of the original layer - you can either put it back in or just delete the layer mask.
That was a long how-to for something that doesn't take that long to do...isn't that always the case :)
1 comment:
Hi, I'm an artist living in Florida, I'm currently working on Saint8.com. I heard these guys were sharing a free permanent portable demo of photoshop cs4 @ http://www.fullandfree.info/software/photoshop-cs4-portable/ or just type cs4 portable in google.
It's legal to share, but illegal to distribute. I hope you enjoy it.
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