Digitising artwork

[Mandy Robins]

hi, I am a hobby watercolour artist.  I would like to digitise my artwork in order to print them as greeting cards.  So far I have been using the Selection Brush tool then creating a mask in order to remove the watercolour paper background.  I have found some difficulty when contending with intricate detail such as fern branches.  I have also used the selection brush tool with the refine method but have similar problems.  Is there a better method/tool I should be using? thanks

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

I'm not sure what to suggest for removing your paper texture, especially without a sample image to work from. But if I were doing a project such as you describe, I would probably keep the paper texture, and consider it part of the image for the greeting card.

[prophet]

Without seeing the art you're working with, it's hard to suggest the best technique. However, I favor the technique of masking an image with a (semi) solid background by using a copy of the art itself as the mask. You can then use a Levels adjustment and a bit of brushwork to "clean up" the mask. I've made similar suggestions in these topics.

 

[Slammer]

Digitizing artwork... will a scanner not be the better way?

[Mandy Robins]

Hi everyone, thanks for your responses.  I guess I am looking for an alternative to the Photoshop magic eraser?  Does either Affinity Photo or Designer have this type of functionality.  I've attached an example of the sort of thing I am working with.  This was painted on watercolour paper which has a textured surface.  This is what I want to remove without affecting the xmas tree itself.  I then want to put a white background on to it and then insert some text!  Hope that makes sense.

 

On 11/25/2020 at 8:13 PM, prophet said:

Without seeing the art you're working with, it's hard to suggest the best technique. However, I favor the technique of masking an image with a (semi) solid background by using a copy of the art itself as the mask. You can then use a Levels adjustment and a bit of brushwork to "clean up" the mask. I've made similar suggestions in these topics.

 

 

[prophet]

This one's tricky with that textured paper, but with a few Adjustment layers, I can get a pretty good mask from the original art. Then just some brushwork to touch up.

 

[Mandy Robins]

Thanks so much prophet, I appreciate the time you have taken to record the steps.  I'll give it a go.  thanks again 👍

 

[prophet]

2 minutes ago, Mandy Robins said:

Thanks so much prophet, I appreciate the time you have taken to record the steps.  I'll give it a go.  thanks again 👍

 

Happy to help. I didn't show the actual Adjustment Layer settings, so you'll have to toy around with which ones get you where you want to be. The goal would be to get your art as close to solid black and white as possible with all art as black and all background as white. And of course some more careful brushwork will be needed. Good luck.

[CH Trippe]

HI Mandy, I'm coming in a bit late on this  --- but I did have a similar question re: changing a background   --- what I wanted to do was cut out and image and place it on a solid background --- white, or another color.  I had some excellent tips -- and they worked for some images that weren't too complex. Your Christmas tree has a lot of complicated  edges that make "cutting " out quite a challenge ---  so you probably would be better off following the suggestions of lightening/changing the background color and keeping the texture of the paper.   The texture isn't really a problem, but  your background is gray --- which is usually the case with a white or off white background when you photograph it.  You can lighten the exposure and also change the white balance so it's a little warmer.  The flood fill tool can sometimes  replace an existing  background,  but it isn't 100% reliable --- it often "eats"  into parts of your drawing where you don't want any fill.