April 23, 2007

Cloud Practice


I was using this sketch to practice painting clouds. I am having trouble scanning some things in so that the color comes through. There are times where it seems to really work well and other times, without switching any settings, it looks aweful. This was an awful time.

3 comments:

Brine Blank said...

My home scanner is a cheapo and has a hard time picking up certain colors (esp. light blue) and subtle color shifts...I have to trek back to the school and use the EPSON 1650 for accurate scanning...it has a color-corrector built in and is the only scanner I've ever used that you have to actually scale back the color in Photoshop because it tends to overshoot the range a bit...do they have a pretty good lab setup at your school?

Digital Scott's Illustrationblog said...

Do you use "Levels" in Photoshop? That seems to help pull back the full range of tones. Open Levels (Image > Adjustments > Levels). You will see little mountain range probably. First, move the black triangle at the left up the base of where the mountain range starts, maybe even into the base slightly. Then move the right white triangle into the right side base of the mountain range. The slide the middle gray triangle left or right until you are happy. I think this process redistributes and adjusts your range of colors. I have a crappy scanner that always scans dark, and this fixes it right up. After adjusting levels once, if you go back in, you see a chopped up mountain range... Hope this was helpful.

You're a prolific illustrator! I like your work a lot.

Ammon said...

Gentlemen, Thanks for the help on this.

I have been trying to figure out the levels and theat definitely helps a lot of the time. I think part of the problem is that I sometimes use a really light wash of color and and gets lost in the shuffle.

I went to scan in a color piece today at school but Messiah College is one small school and the one and only Mac lab has the best scanner on site and their was a class. "Get out I screamed," but nobody moved. I will figure out the schedule soon. The summer should be a bit more open.