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   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! 24 Dec 2009 Tali Tjiang Loading... this saves so much time I’m one of those who goes out of their way to outline with the eraser tool and then fill the space in with white. 24 Jan 2010 Anon. Loading... could not find a program for 8 hours gahhhh well it aint photoshop but i got one that works well enough....i guess.... 26 Mar 2010 Tony CyberKatt Cooper Loading... THX!!!! now I know how to clean up all those pencil sketches I’ve done!! 22 Sep 2010 Frankie Wolfcry Price Loading... Thanks alot! this really helped me out. 16 Nov 2010 Amy Carla Shearer Loading... Excellent tut, you are very clear and seem to not miss a step... thank you so very much for instruction. 15 Jul 2011 Nitsan even Loading... wow that really helps! 17 Aug 2011 Anon. Loading... I hope this works in Sai. Page: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 7 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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