What Resolution to Use for Scanning Artworks 

Thanks 😁

That's true. Some paper can turn yellow even if the paper is so called acid free.

Thanks 😁

Welcome :-)

Thanks :-)

I'll go with 600 DPI nowadays.

Unfortunately, high quality A3 art scanners (from Epson) are very expensive. If you create art often, and scan often, those large scanners may still be worth the money. But otherwise, with really large pieces of work, maybe using a camera to photograph may be easier, and cheaper.

thank you so much for replying so quickly. I thought you might say that. I'm not that great with a camera and lights, but will have to learn. @@teohyc

Any compact camera will have better image quality than phone camera. BUT try phone camera first. More important than the camera is actually lighting. Make sure light is bright and even.

@@teohyc Grazie mille :)

Nowadays I scan at 600 DPI which I think has enough resolution to create high res desktop wallpaper, and also more than good enough for high res prints. 1200 DPI is gonna take up a lot of storage space. But of course which DPI to use really comes down to what you want to do with the art later on.

@@teohyc thank you!

I prefer Canon but both have same scan quality

First step to getting accurate colour is to calibrate your monitor with a colour calibrator. The scanner should give you a colour accurate scan unless it's faulty. If see that your scan is not true to the colour you see in real life, you have to edit it with software, e.g. Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Affinity Photo.

If the scan is good, you don't really need much edits. It's mostly to rotate the scan, crop away the unwanted bits. If you don't want the paper texture, you adjust the Levels to remove that. Those are the three edits I do with my scans.

the best way check the colours of your scan is to put a colour chart at the side or bottom of your picture, that way you have a referance to the correct colours when you compare it to the original @Yasmine S.

​@@teohyc Recently I bought Lide 400 for watercolor scans on mac, but all scans needs to have more reds and yellows in them. since macbook monitor shouldn't be uncalibrate, I am afraid the scanner package dropped during shipping and that happened. what do you think?

@@ODINCODES When unedited, the scan should not look unnatural. So if the colours appear very different compared to the original, it could be hardware issue.

I have a lide 400 review. Scan quality is similar

It is true if you look at the resolution of the file

1200 DPI is good for most purposes

When it comes out in the future

maybe March or April I think.@@teohyc

Scanning at 600dpi will be very safe

Teoh Yi Chie thank you, its Canon Canoscan 400 a good choice for oil paintings?

@@franciscodennis2693 For oil, I recommend using a camera instead. Oil may stick to the glass, and there are textures which will be blur when scanned. Anything not in contact with the glass will be blur.

DPI is for scanning and print. PPI and pixels are for digital.

Not sure what happened. Maybe not enough RAM.

The scanner can capture the lighter areas. It's just that when I edit the scan, I'm too lazy to create another layer that has the highlights preserved

Isnt a review supposed to be based on your *own* experience with the product?

High and low resolution is relative to what you want to do with it. Rather than go through the hassle of suing people, it might be better to just not put out such high resolution files online. How much do you think it cost to hire a lawyer just to draft a warning letter? When we (artist and photographers) share images online, it's just to let people view the images, not for them to download and reproduce. Hence there's no need to share such high resolution files. 300px wide is too small. My website uses 500px wide column and that feels a bit small for me as well. Going forward, I think 640px - 800px wide is a good enough size. I share larger images at 990px. If there are people who share my images online without permission, I would just file a DMCA takedown with the webhost or with Google. It's more effective and cheaper than going through a lawyer. Every minute spent dealing with this sort of stuff is every minute we can't make art. Whenever I share files only, my mind will automatically convert 500px to 2.5inches print size, or 600px to 3 inch print size if the person is reproducing a 200 DPI print.

@Yasmine S. Disabling right-click on a page is only an annoyance and only prevents very casual saving (and also prevents legitimate use). If the image can be accessed in your browser for viewing, then users already have access to it. For example, you can Shift+Right-Click in Chrome to bypass all Javascript hooks and still save the image, or use the Inspector to find the URL and download it directly. As Teoh mentioned, limiting the resolution to 200 dpi or less, and also explicitly stating the license can be more helpful. For example, if you find somebody has posted an image on their website without your permission and without attribution, you can first reach out and ask them to remove it (many people do this by accident). If that does not work, filing a DMCA complaint with the hosting provider usually does the trick (as somebody who used to be a sysadmin at a hosting company, we received these all the time and would notify customers of these, and suspend their accounts if they did not comply with approx 72 hours). Granted, this does not work in all countries/hosting providers, as DMCA is a USA thing. But providers in other countries will usually still forward the notice to the customer.

​@@teohyc I meant 300 to 600 dpi. Sorry must have slipped my mind to add the unit. I get the cost and time effort argument. But as you said yourself DMCA take down and other report options online help you with that. Also I would not say that's an effective solution either in all cases. On the other hand you can get legal protection insurance for these cases. I'm not saying to give your art away. How you distribute your art is your decision. However I would argue that if you want to show your art online, make sure not to sell it short with low resolution uploads.