Category: how to’s

Firstly – I’d like to state that I am absolutely no expert in this area, I’m just sharing how I do it and what works for me.

When scanning your work, it’s super important to get a good quality scanner, I have the Epson Perfection V550 Photo which I bought a good few years ago and it’s still going strong. It did cost me a couple hundred quid at the time but it’s been absolutely worth every penny!

When I first started, I tried using the little scanner that comes on top of the cheapy cheap printers you can get but it was DIRE quality, not anywhere near what you’d need for good quality reproductions – I do not recommend! If you don’t want to invest in a more substantial scanner then you are definitely better off sending your work to a professional for them to scan for you! That way you’re guaranteed a file and a print that looks as close to the original as possible and you know the quality is going to be as good as they can get it.

But, when doing it yourself – be sure to give the bed a good wipe with a lint free cloth before scanning anything! Get rid of any dust so your scan is as clean as can be!

Once you’ve placed your artwork onto the scanner bed you want to make sure its lined up at the edges and completely covered by the lid – if, like me, you want to scan pieces that are larger than A4, I always lay a t-shirt or something over the scanner to stop any light getting in those edges.

Now once the scanner has does its overview scan, I get the options to change the settings – here is how mine is set up as standard:

As you can see I decrease the brightness a tad, but I can tweak all these depending each particular drawing depending on the subject’s colour! The aim is to get it looking as close to the original drawing as I can. Then I’m ready to click scan! I always scan at 300dpi.

Once scanned, I load what I call the “raw scan” into my photo editor, I use a program called Pixelmator Pro, its basically photoshop but it’s a one off VERY small cost so, big fan of that! I’ll make any last colour adjustments and if needed go through the painstaking task of removing the background – time consuming but I haven’t found a quicker/more precise way other than a very small eraser and teeny tiny movements. I find that if I select the whole background it can erase smaller details around the edges of the drawing that I want to keep. I do have a drawing tablet/graphics pad that I used to use for this as I could be really precise but I’ve gotten pretty good at just doing it on my laptops trackpad! Practice makes progress and all that!

And finally, after I’m happy with the edited scan, I’ll view it using the soft proof settings downloaded from my printers website – enabling soft proof colours means I can view the drawing in the colours it will print, it gives me a better idea of what the final print will look like, such as if some colours won’t be as dark or if some will get washed out.

*googles soft proof meaning*… *copies and pastes*:

“Soft proofing is the ability to view a simulation of how your image will look when out-put to the printer on your monitor, based on the chosen profile.”

Get it? No? Me neither.

Then I’ll save it as a PNG and its good to go to print! Woo!

Hope that made some sense, and helped in some way! Feel free to send any questions you have and I’ll do my best as always!

Cherry xo

I get asked a lot about making prints, from preparing them to be scanned to packaging them up for sale. I’ve previously posted a blog about how I scan and edit my artwork, but here’s a quick rundown –

Firstly, once my drawings are complete, there are a few routes to create the files needed to send off to the printers. With my coloured pencil drawings I use my Epson Perfection v550 Photo scanner, its only just over A4 size so there’s a bit of photoshop wizardry involved in merging the scans together if the piece is larger than A4, but after a few you can the hang of it quick. Once scanned in at 300dpi, I edit the colours to the best of my ability and send that file off for printed proofs on 4 different papers to see which suits the image best and then I make any sizing/colour changes before settling on my final print file.

If however my drawing is exceedingly large, I can also photograph it with my Canon DSLR, and send the printers that high quality image. I also take photographs of my pastel drawings as I’m terrified of them smudging against the scanner glass.

Another option if you don’t have or don’t want the stress of scanning or photographing your work – is to send off your original piece to the printers themselves! They’ll create your print file and colour match it for you – then send your work back to you! Obviously there’s a bit more risk in this as you’re having to post work back and forth and entrust someone to be careful with your piece but as the professionals are doing it, your prints are probably going to be more accurate to the original.

Oooft, so, how do I order the actual prints? I use dStudio, they’ve been by far the best print shop for me, and I tried MANY when I was first researching places and getting samples. They have a super easy to navigate website, you load up your files and input what size and how many you want!

Once submitted, they print your order, send over an invoice and boom – easy peasy!

Once I have my print order in hand, I’ll sign them if they need signing and pop them into a biodegradable clear sleeve with an acid-free backing board of the same size, seal it up and its ready to go!

I don’t offer mounts for a few reasons – I use different papers which are all slightly different shades of white so I’d have to stock and store matching mounts for each, as well as multiple sizes, I’d also have to post them out in larger parcels which would add to the cost of the print itself. I advise buyers to take the artwork to be professionally framed, that way the piece is guaranteed to look its best.

I highly recommend dStudio, I’ve been using them ever since I started my print collection and I’ve never had bad service or any negative experience and the prints are always absolutely top quality and beautiful!

Cherry xo