420's Editing School

[Guest 420]

Part 1: Scanning

I'm not gonna say alot about scanning.

The main thing to remember is to scan at 300dpi. This is important because we will be reducing the image to 150dpi and you always want to reduce by one half (makes for a much cleaner reduction)

I also want to stress the importance of getting as much of the page in your scan as posible. I know getting into the seam between pages can be difficult but it can save you hours while doing joins. Putting something heavy on top of your scanner lid does help.

[Guest 420]

Part 2: Single Page Edit

I encourage everyone to play along at home. I am using Photoshop CS1 but everything I do here should apply to CS2 and the older PS also. For today's lesson we will be using these 2 pages (go ahead, open and download them)

Here is a key to the toolbar so I can reference the tools by number

OK, so you should now have photoshop open....next open the images you just downloaded. One thing first, make sure you can see the little History menu (this let's you step backward when you make mistakes) if you can't see it go to the menu bar at the top, click window, and make sure History has a check mark.

While editing you should do these steps in this order...

1.rotate

2.crop

3.color correction

4.resize

5.save

Let's start with the Joe & Mac page. This page we got lucky and it is straight, we can skip step 1. For step 2 use the select tool (1) to select the area of the image you want to keep (the page) and then go to the menu bar (on top) click Image, go down click Crop. (Some might point out there is a crop tool in the tool bar but I don't like it so much). Now check the edge to see if you got a good crop, the selection outline is now covering the edges so click on the image to deselect. If you still have alittle garbage on the edge, use the history menu to undo the deselect, then use the arrow key on you keyboard to nudge the selection outline over (excluding the part you want to lose) and click crop again.

Now for color correction. On this image we will use Brightness/Contrast (your new best friend) , once in a while you will use Color Balance or Hue/Saturation (you can experiment with them but I don't see them nessesary here) So, in the menu bar click Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast, add +10 to both, click OK. If you had a white background, this is when you would make sure it is clean, but for this image, no worries.

Resizing is done by going to the menu bar and clicking Image>Image Size. Make sure the Constrain Proportions box is checked and FIRST change the Resolution to 150 pixles/inch THEN change the Width to 1280 pixles, click OK

Saving is easy.....Just remember to save at a jpg quality 8 (or higher, but 8 is good)

That's it for part one of the lesson

Here is what I did

For the next page we need to rotate. For this click Image>Rotate Canvas>Arbitrary. For this you need to guess (after a while it gets easy) Clearly the image needs to be rotated clockwise (CW) but how much? Most images are less than 0.5 off, this one (I got it on the second try) is 1.3. So input 1.3 clockwise and click OK. To check if you are straight use the select tool to draw a square around what should be a straight line. NOTE- I have heard other scanners talk of another way to rotate using another tool , but this is my way.

Now step 2, as before select what you want to keep and crop.

Here is what I am keeping

After crop I do Brightness/Contrast at +20 for both. To help clean up the white background use the Paintbucket tool (5), first set your foreground color to white (this is in the toolbar, click it), then (once you have selected the Paintbucket tool) go to the top and set the Opacity to 100% and the tolerance to 40. Now I dump paint on the left side in the white area and on the right in the white area. Then I use the Paintbrush tool (3) to clean up any thing else I want to get rid of. Next, making sure the entire canvas is selected, I select the Move tool (2) and use the arrow keys to center the image. Last resize and then save the same as above.

And.......

If you are playing along at home feel free to post questions, comments and your results

[Guest 420]

Part 3: Batching Actions

This lesson is a quick tutorial on using the Actions menu. The Actions menu can save you ALOT of time whlie editing a book. First you need to find it.

*notice in this image from lesson 2 that the only menus I use (on the left) are Actions , History and Layers

If yours is not open already use the same steps as you used to find the History menu in part 2.

Now, what we are going to do is record a group of actions that we can then play back with the click of a button, cool right .

So you have a big stack of images open in photoshop.....start on the first one. You will need to do rotate and crop manually (because each page is different), after thats done let's start recording. At the bottom of the Actions menu click on the Create New Action button (it looks like a square in a square) Click ok in the window that pops up and you are now recording. Everything you are doing is being recorded so no extra clicking around. Do your Brightness/Contrast (or other color corrections) then do a Resize then mabey a Save and Close (to save use Save under File, if you use "Save As" you may save all of you edits on top of each other :( ). Now click Stop in the bottom of the Actions menu (square on the left side). Then on the next image you can just rotate and crop then click the play button in the Actions menu and the rest of the work is done for you.

Be smart, sometimes different pages need different editing techniques, your one batch might not work for every page and remember you don't want to record things like Paintbrush. The History menu is there to let you step back. And the reason I said "mabey a Save and Close" is because you most likely don't want that to be your last action because you may want to be able to step back. Sometimes I order my action like this "Resize, Save, Close, Color Correct" so that way, with the click of one button I can save and close the completed page I am working on plus color correct the next open page, then I would crop and use paint if nessary and then click again.

I have several different sets of actions all for different purposes, and they save me loads of time

I also change around my Action menu with every new book because different scans require different techniques, feel free to play around with this and find what works for you.

I hope this helps some of you

[Guest 420]

Part 4: Joins

Coming Soon

[Guest 420]

*reserved*

[Guest 420]

*reserved*

[Guest sych0]

If you don't mind, I'd like to add a suggestion for rotating to an arbitrary degree. I'm assuming this is the method you mentioned other scanners doing.

If the page your scanning has a straight horizontal line, select the Ruler tool (docked with the eye dropper). Click at the beginning of the straight line, and click at the end of the straight line. (the longer the line, the better)

Now when you go into Rotate, a decimal will already be filled in. Click OK and youll have a perfectly rotated image with zero guesswork. I know you said you liked doing it your way better, but if youre drawing a box to check anyways, why not just draw a line from the start? (holding shift while drawing will create a straight line too)

[Guest 420]

If you don't mind, I'd like to add a suggestion for rotating to an arbitrary degree. I'm assuming this is the method you mentioned other scanners doing.

I don't mind at all and yes I think that is the method. I heard it mentioned a few times but never really took the time to try it Thank you for posting it.

Sooo.. you seem to know your way around photoshop.....would you like to help us edit scans?

I have had very little time to edit lately and there is a pretty big backlog of scans to edit :(

Please

And for those who may be waiting for the rest of this guide.....sorry, I was on vacation, I will get the rest up soon.

[jeffjenx]

good work with the guide so far. very informative. get at me some ftp details and i'll try to get your scans cleaned up over the course of a couple weeks, time permitting.

just pm me, i won't go overboard this time.

[Guest 420]

"Part 3: Batching Actions" is ready

[Foppe]

and

Good enough to try a magazine?

[Guest 420]

Good enough to try a magazine?

Very nice

I'll be in and out of my house tonight but I can set you up with something to edit later

I know Philly has a bunch of stuff waiting for edits....mabey he can send something your way.......

Also, To Ninjagowoowoo, I did get your PM and we would be happy to have you edit also.

As I stated above...Later....

[Guest 420]

Ninjagowoowoo and Foppe.....PMs sent with info

[meppi]

Before I actually get to work I've been playing around with this tutorial to see how I should continue.

The scans I've done so far were simply cropped and then resized to a width of 1280. Never thought about using the Brightness/Contrast options or anything. Nor using the bucket fill tool to clear up the white parts of a page.

Would it be possible to still correct the scans I already have using this technique or would I have to rescan everything? (Not really looking forward to this if that's the case. :( )

What I also found out is that I find the colours to be much better when I perform the first 10% increase in brightness and contrast, but when I do it the 2nd time for 20%, the colours in my scans don't resemble the magazine originals any more.

Would it be acceptable to only use the 10% increase?

I have also scanned my previous magazines in 300dpi and when resizing I kept them at 300dpi, since I noticed that when I converted them to 150 the quality dropped off significantly, especially on pages with lots of colour.

And keeping them at 300dpi didn't seem to increase the size of the scans to much.

[meppi]

I just uploaded a 10 page test here.

Let me know what you guys think.

[Slinky]

Putting something heavy on top of your scanner lid does help.

It sure does. This might be of interest. It is the latest scanning guide released by DCP, who specialise in comics scans. Many of the same techniques apply to scanning magazines.

http://rapidshare.com/files/47720342/DCP_Scanning_Guide_v3.1.rar