what's a good scanning dpi for comics? eventually, down the road, a long time from now* i hope to be able to publish my work. if that happens, id like to be able to pull up some of my early stuff and use it for filler, without having to try to find the actual pages and rebuild the compositions.

Corvin

*i was flamed off the megatokyo forums for asking this. i was "in the wrong forum" and my artwork "sucked ass." im just looking for technical information; i know i have drawing issues.

We aren't Nazis like the rabid anime cult that follows MegaTokyo. :P

Your in a safer place.

.: Myxomatosis :.

aw, does that mean youre going to hug me close and comfort me in the dark? my big beefy protector!

*squee*

Corvin
get away from me. i have a penis.

This avatar kicks ass. :-D

Back on Topic: Scanning, I have no idea. :smt120

.: Myxomatosis :.

Print-quality DPI is usually 300 :)

I have seen some requirements higher than 300 dpi though.

IIRC Radio Comix wants 400 dpi.

I believe for submissions to the 3rd Drunk Duck Anthology were 600 dpi. (That gave my 'puter some memory problems.)

I always scan in 600 dpi then i fix the pages and reduce them a bit in photoshop.

Scanning involves more than dpi of course, a good scanner has image options like "lineart" and brightness and contrast switches.

What is the difference if I scan something at 300 dpi and it is something like... 1500 by 2000 pixels in size. Then something needs to be 600 dpi for printing. I know in Photoshop I can just (and have in the past) change it to 600 dpi and stick with the same size dimensions. So in a way I'm faking the dpi - but at print resolution, there's no difference to the eye between 300 and 600 really. The stuff I've seen printed after I cheated in that way seems perfectly fine.

So um... my question is does that kind of thing work? Or is there something I'm overlooking?

i dunno, but i just scanned in six panels in 600 dpi, and tried to color and compose them in a nice, neat fashion.

around panel 4, during about the 6th hour of work, when i should be asleep (it's 4am for me), i succumbed to "fuckitandpostititis."

you can view the wonders of my labor in a few hours, i suppose. im crashing.

Corvin

300 dpi is fantastic for great printed images. Professional printers can get a decent looking image from 150 dpi or even lower for black and white art. If you're making art for a billboard sort of size, then 600 dpi or higher for the finished image is a good strategy.

Never, ever increase the dpi, unless you don't mind the print size shrinking. Or else you simply lose quality.

There's this fad with a lot of comic makers about scanning line art at 600 dpi, actually scanning it as "line art" which is a simpletwo colour black and white setting. I think that comes from the fact people still focus a lot on hand inking and they want to retain the line quality by reducing the image size and converting it to RGB or CMYK later on. That's all it is.

It's a good idea for any finished hardcopy art to be scanned at a very high res if you're going to use that scanned image for printing later on.

I could go on… But finished web art can be as low as 75 dpi. It’s a good idea to keep your originals at between 150 dpi and 300 dpi, and at whatever dimensions you think you’d like it printed at (ie: 10" x 8").

Im probably doing my stuff in overly high quality. It all depends on what you gonna use it for. I think its nice to be able to print them out on big paper without it looking pixelated.

My pages go at about 3600x5700, 600dpi and in color, and look good even on a A1 paper.

ozoneocean
But finished web art can be as low as 75 dpi.

72 actually.

I stand corrected.

I used to scan at around 200 dpi and print that way. It looked okay, but not as nice as 300 DPI. Most printers like Colorcentric can't make 600 look better than 300.

nice thing about scanning and saving each panel?

its easy to edit when you make an error and decide to fix after the fact.

i changed today's punchline. the original... yeah... i explain in the newspost.

Corvin

Looking at your comic, i must say that the problem doesn't really lie with the scanning as far as i can see. There are some coloring techniques that you should learn to keep the lineart clean.

VegaX
Looking at your comic, i must say that the problem doesn't really lie with the scanning as far as i can see. There are some coloring techniques that you should learn to keep the lineart clean.

1) yeah, i used a #2 yellow pencil for the lineart. im going to go buy some non-photo blue pencils tomorrow.

2) yeah, this is more of an experiment than a money-making venture. i just want to keep my options open, y'know?

thanks for the tip.

Corvin