Retouching and preparing scanned drawings and paintings for print

[freshflyingfish]

Hello

I really hope someone can help me. I am preparing some artwork for print and am not sure how to make the necessary adjustments in Affinity. I've had partial success in the past using Gimp, but would like to develop a work flow in Affinity that solves the following problems affectively and consistently: 

• smooths the paper and some paint texture so fibres are not noticeable even in scaled up prints - I think some king of slight guassian blur may do it, perhaps in tandem with a mask - but I can't seem to get it right.  
  • in the examples below the paper texture clearly when zooming in - this currently shows in print. Zooming in to the pink area you can see the flakes of paint. In the original, this adds character, but in print it looks naff.  I would like them to retain some hand made painterly quality, but it needs to be toned down in this context. 
• I need to smooth or sharpen some edges around objects and in some cases whole areas of colour, without moving so far from the original that it loses all painterly quality. 
  • the trees in the foreground would be improved in print if I could smooth the edges slightly. 
  • the areas of blue really need to be blurred or smoothed too. 

Does anyone have any suggestions for a workflow in either Photo or Designer or both, that would enable me to fix these minor but evident flaws relatively quickly and consistently, without having to redraw the whole image.  I have dozens of pictures that need more or less work.

 

Thanks for taking the time to read this. 

 

[NathanC]

Hi @freshflyingfish apologies for the late reply,

Is this workflow something you're still having issues with? You could try using a low px radius 'Dust & Scratches' filter to reduce the paper texture/flakes of paint, and perhaps combine this with an Unsharp Mask for sharpening (perhaps combined with a mask layer to only affect the desired areas).

https://affinity.help/photo2/English.lproj/pages/Filters/filter_dustscratches.html

[Old Bruce]

On 12/5/2024 at 11:43 AM, freshflyingfish said:

I really hope someone can help me. I am preparing some artwork for print and am not sure how to make the necessary adjustments in Affinity. I've had partial success in the past using Gimp, but would like to develop a work flow in Affinity that solves the following problems affectively and consistently: 

I don't really know if this will help as I don't see the things you are describing as you see them. Anyways, you could try using a Median blur filter, either the destructive or adjustable filter layer. Try with a setting of just a few pixels.