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Novice Seeks Wisdom... Scanning Artwork & 'Vector' aspects


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Thank You Upfront for your help.

 

Let me explain what I will be using Affinity Photo & Designer for:

I do a lot of 'Logos' and/or Tshirts layouts for people. My Process is to actually sketch, then ink out the designs by hand. Then I scan them with the goal of 'cleaning them up' somewhat before presenting them to clients officially.

I am NOT trained in any kind of 'pro' graphic schooling. Although I have over a decade of experience doing logos/layouts (mostly in Adobe PS) - there are so many basics that I simply do NOT understand.

 

NOW... the issues I am having.

I ultimately want to learn how to scan my inked artwork in and be able to present it officially as 'vectorized'. BUT what I tend to end up with is VERY pixelated conclusions.

Its hard for me to 'draw' the logos inside the actual program bc I simply prefer - and am highly experienced at doing it by hand. And the logos in which I design (especially if they are more album 'layouts' or Tshirt designs) are very detailed, making it near impossible for me to scan and 'trace' inside Affinity & Designer as some have suggested. (I've attached a pic as an example).

 

I could use, from you, my new Affinity Fam... ANY help in understanding how to use Photo & Designer for my specific purposes: Scanning detailed artwork, 'cleaning it up', and finalizing it as a detailed and NOT pixelated product ('Vectorizing'?)

 

 

Historic Stone Logo OG Line Art.jpg

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Affinity Designer doesn’t have an auto-trace feature, so you need to use another application for that part of the process.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
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33 minutes ago, dutchshader said:

try inkscape for this,, the result on b/w images is pretty good. 

609108489_HistoricStoneLogoOGLineArt.jpg.e2df11742fae91946aa1dbef576e7015.svg

That is pretty good, you can use the Node Tool to clean up edges and end up with a nice vector art work, it also takes a lot less time than scanning in and then tracing over.

If the coloured versions are bold and defined, I think you'd get similar results, if gradients were being used you could always leave those out and add them in Designer post edit.

PS. nice artwork.

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4 hours ago, JeremiahDirt said:

 

Let me explain what I will be using Affinity Photo & Designer for:

I do a lot of 'Logos' and/or Tshirts layouts for people. My Process is to actually sketch, then ink out the designs by hand. Then I scan them with the goal of 'cleaning them up' somewhat before presenting them to clients officially.m 'layouts' or Tshirt designs) are very detailed, making it near impossible for me to scan and 'trace' inside Affinity & Designer as some have suggested. (I've attached a pic as an example).

 

Have you considered just using a graphics tablet?

Edit. I just noticed in another post that you have one. Consider spending the time to use it properly. You won't regret it!

If you have a talent for drawing, it is the closest to pen and ink you will get.

Drawing, scanning and tracing is the vector equivalent of using film, getting a print made then scanning the photo again. Only worse because of the added difficulty of vectorising and tracing seldoms gets it "right" unless for a simple shape.

It will take a bit of learning but not so much more than learning to trace and Vectorise and the results will always be much better. No pixels, ever. And once you have mastered the skills, it will save you so much future work as every artwork is a vector. No need to trace or anything.

The other advantage is that you can save component parts of the drawings to reuse or modify.

 

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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Hi, JeremiahDirt,

I did have art schooling, and was a practicing portrait painter for some years. I did do some black and white "comic" style art. As I moved into digital, I became interested in various traditional design motifs, and so spent  many hours translating crummy early .jpgs, my own scanned B&W photos, later crummy digital photos,  scans from old pattern books, etc.

Here's some of the things I learned. Most work for reproduction benefits from being made on a smooth surface paper, w. high whiteness. I started out using standard Speedball metal nibs w. India ink. I tended to work on rather inexpensive stock, tag, cardstock, bristol board. I moved to technical pens, and finally just used fine tip brushes. All of these can produce very crisp edges, which scan very well.

When they became available, I started scanning at 600 dpi. 

Here is a typical routine. Check that the scanned image doesn't have any smudges, say from erased graphite. Do digital erasing. If the original drawing had areas that were less opaque than others, do a threshold adjustment to make the image nothing but B&W. Most likely that will make the form edges rather jaggy. If auto traced, those will make an image that will take hours to simplify. Better to then add a small amount of gaussian blur, often as little as 0.5 radius. When zoomed, the edges of the shapes should be smooth, but slightly fuzzy.

When auto trace, most of the software I've used in the last 10 years or so will have various setting, such as threshold, and smoothing, which will clip off the fuzziness, and try to make a simpler set of vectors. Note, you almost certainly will need to clean up the resulting vectors.

In your sample image, all the little speckles and slightly jagged lines would turn into blobby masses, 'cause the vectorizing process tries to wrap a curve around the mass off dabs.

As mentioned, sometimes it is faster to work by just tracing vectors over the scan. Pens and tablets are pretty natural feeling at this point.

Also, given the resolution one can work at, and what can be reproduced, lots of people don't go vector. A digital painting works well enough. My daughter does free lance covers, and is collaborating on some graphic novels, comics, and find Photoshop painting adequate. 

 

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As @gdenbysays. It is not always nenecessay or even desirable to vectorise. 

I worked with T shirt printers for years and scanned many prices of artwork and used them as bitmaps. With proper scanning and a little bit of digital cleaning, they were perfect.

The trick is use good quality art materials and wherever possible, create the artwork larger than the printed result. i.e. Scan an A3 artwork at 600 DPI, print it at a quarter of that size and it becomes 2400 DPI. 

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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