Cleaning Scans In Photoshop (Page 1 of 3)

By Alanna (Solenna) Elias

Being a mod, I see an awful lot of pictures. A lot are poorly cropped, or on lined paper (which is 'illegal' in Elfwood), or incredibly pale, or smudged, or whatever. And it's annoying, because these problems can easily be fixed with 10 minutes and a computer program. As I have photoshop, that is what I will talk about. The method I use for removing the lines won't work with coloured pictures or delicately shaded pictures, but you shouldn't be colouring or shading pictures on lined paper anyways. It'll work for blue ballpoint if you're careful.

Change is good.

This is step one. I scanned a dragon I whipped up. Poor cropping. On lined paper. Smudged. This picture would get rejected instantly by the mods, and for good reason. The presentation is awful, and totally unprofessional.

So, we obviously have to fix it up real good. But the thing is, how?

First off, open up photoshop. This is what we'll be working with.

After photoshop is open, look for the crop tool, handily outlined in blue here. The first thing we're gonna do is trim the borders of this picture down to size.

So what you do is take the tool, start in one corner, and drag a box around the image. I usually start in the top left, but it's a personal choice. If you do it right, you should end up with a box around the main image, with everything outside of it shaded a darker grey. If you miss, and need to adjust the box, just click on the little boxes like the one the arrow is pointing at and readjust the box to fit. Then hit enter.

Aaaand, voila! The dragon, while still on lined paper and smuded and pale, is at least not surrounded by useless floating white space. Now lets get those blasted lines out of there!

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FARP Article Guestbook Date Name Comment   2 Jun 2008 Jai "Jaybird" Foster Loading... Umm. I don’t have any of that fancy stuff...all I got is Paint and Microsoftword...which is what I use on pictures. Sooo, how would I do it on one of those??? 30 Sep 2008 Sexy Waffle #39 Loading... Thanks SOOOO much!! That was really really helpful, I’m so happy I found this tutorial Thanks again! ~<3 6 Nov 2008 Anon. Loading... This is amazing!!! I can finally get rid of those lines!! Thanks so much!!! 8 Jan 2009 Anon. Loading... thanx alot! 12 Mar 2009 Hans Loading... i´´d like to know what to do when the lined paper is not with colored lines. cause i´´ve tried this, fiddling a little after reading this tutorial, and it just pales the entire drawing. 1 May 2009 Marie walsh Loading... thanks this was realy great, ive only just got photoshop 6.0 and it looks a little different,but this will definutly help 24 May 2009 Aki Loading... Excellent tutorial! It’s really simple and helpful and I LOVE simple tutorials like these that point out SEEMINGLY simple stuff, coz not everyone has what some people call ’basic’ knowledge =) Thank you! 16 Jul 2009 Flarp Loading... good tutorial, but I still have leftover grey lines 16 Jul 2009 Flarp Loading... nevermind! I just figured it out! thanks for helpin out! 6 Aug 2009 Victoria L Smith Loading... Thanks so much!!! This helped tons! Page: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 Not signed in, Add an anonymous comment to this guestbook...     Your Name: Your Mail: B I U URL ? Click here to write something! Post Message!    Private message? (Info)

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