Scan, Edit, Perfect: How to Digitize Your Artwork

1. Intro: How can you effectively digitize your artwork? How can you clean up dust or fix inaccuracies in your analog work? What scanner settings to use if you want to print your work later? How can you edit your work so it looks amazing and professional on social media or in a portfolio? I will answer all these questions in my Scan edit Perfect. How to digitize your artwork? Hello. I'm Anne Taka. I'm an illustrator graphic designer and teacher based in Berlin. I've been on my creative journey for over ten years, always experimenting with both analog and digital materials and often mixing them together. In today's world, having an online presence is super important for artists, designers, and illustrators. It's a fantastic and necessary way to show of your work to the world. But it's crucial to do it right. If you're new to digitization or have only limited experience, this course will teach you how to scan your analog work correctly. You will learn different ways to edit works created in various techniques like watercolor pencil or acrylic. I will explain what adjustment players and masks in photoshop are. Plus, I will show you some simple, but very effective photoshop tools that will help you digitize your work professionally. And quickly, at the end, I will show you how to use a mockup to let your work look absolutely amazing in a context. So if you are excited to learn all this, I'm thrilled to welcome you to my course. Let's get started. 2. Class Project: M. Hi and welcome to my course on digitizing your artwork. I'm so excited that you've decided to join. Let me start by explaining what the course project will be about. I think many of you have already guessed it. That's right. The project is your digitized and edited artwork. But let's make it a bit more interesting. At the end of the course, there will be a bonus lesson where I will show you how to use mockups. I suggest you place your work in a mockup you like and show the world your before and after. Like this or like that. I'd really love to see your projects here on skill share and also on social media. Take me on Instagram, and I will share your work on my profile. For this course, you will need scanner, photoshop and your art supplies if you want to prepare some works specifically for the class. So see you in the next lesson. 3. First Steps: To understand the basic principles of digitizing images, we will need a simple printer that allows us to change settings during scanning. I personally use this multi functional device, which I e for its ability to scan and print larger formats. But the principles are the same for the most of devices. While digitizing, I categorize my work into four types. Black and white, colored, transparent, and opaque. Different artistic techniques can fall into these categories. Black and white are usually monochromatic graphic works made with ink, pen, marker, liner, and similar. Colred ones are those with more than one color, which can be done with acrylic, gage, watercolor, colored pencils, various markers, and even oil. Transparent works are those where the paper shows through the material. Primarily watercolor, possibly alcohol markers, or even pencil or ink, depending on how they were applied. Opaque ones are usually works made with covering materials like acrylic, gage, oil, pastel, acrylic markers. There could be numerous examples of materials. After this course, you will be able to determine which settings and processing suit your work best. 4. Clean Before Scan: All right. If you have prepared your artwork, we can move straight to scanning. But first, there's an often overlooked step. That's thoroughly cleaning off the glass surface of your scanner. This glass can have fingerprints, strench dust or tiny spots from previous pictures, which can make extra work for you editing later. To avoid this, take a soft cloth, preferably microfiber like the ones used to clean glasses or monitors and wipe the surface. You can also use a bit of glasses cleaning fluid. I also use sometimes a flashlight to check for any missed spots. If it's particularly important to avoid dust on your artwork, you might even want to get a special air blower to blow off dust before every scan. Now you can place your artwork as indicated on the scanner. There's often an arrow or document symbol to guide you. Some scanners even recognize the paper orientation themselves. Now our artwork is ready to scan. And now let's move on to a very important step of scanning. Let's look at the settings that are important to consider. So see you in the next lesson. 5. Settings For Scanning: Hi again, everyone, and welcome to this lesson, where we will take a closer look at the scanning process and settings. I will be using image capture, which comes with every make box. But if you have a different program, no worries, you'll be able to find similar settings, maybe just in a different order. You can also start the scanning process directly from photoshop by going to file, then import, and then images from device. This will open the scanning program you have installed in my case, the same image capture. When we open the program, we see various settings. Let's start from the beginning. My image is currently in preview mode, simply placed on the scanner glass. If we look at our settings panel and go to the bottom, we will see preview button. Pressing this button, we'll scan the image at a low resolution, allowing us to check if everything's okay. If our artwork is positioned correctly and if there are any unwanted spots or scratches. By default, my program is set to scan using the flat bed option because we are scanning from the glass. Some scanners have an option to feed sheets through automatically, but that's more for documents. The next setting is kind, which refers to the method of scanning? You can choose from text, black and white, and color scanning. Here's the difference. If you choose text setting. Look, you can already see that the image has changed. Why does it look like this? In this case, the scanner will erase all colors, only recognizing black and white. All gray tones will be split into black and white based on their intensity. In this case, the device decided that pink color was dark enough to translate into black. Next setting would be black and white. In this case, even color originals will be scanned in black and white, but with shades of gray, which is great for checking contrast, for example. The last one is color. Here, the scanner reads all colors in the image, which is, of course, optimal for color images. Next up is the resolution, a crucial setting that determines the quality and size of your image. Measured in DPI, dots per inch or PPI, pixels per inch. Resolution is the number of dots in a square inch of your image. The higher the DPI, the more detailed and clear the image is. Remember what happens if you zoom in a photo, you see tiny rectangles. Those are pixels or dots. Different purposes require different resolutions. For digital use like websites or social media. Less than 300 DPI is already fine. For printing like posters or merchandise, you should scan at least 300 DPI. I always recommend scanning images at a high resolution. You can always reduce the resolution later without losing quality, but you can't increase it. It's also important to remember that resolution is inversely proportional to size. That means that if I enlarge the image during processing, the resolution decreases, and if I reduce the image size, the resolution increases. Here's an example. If I scan a four image at 300 DPI and then double the size to A three, the resolution becomes 150 DPI. Conversely, if I reduce the image to size A five, which is a half of A four, the resolution becomes 600 DPI. So if you plan to enlarge your work for future use, always scan it at a higher resolution. To scan this image, I'm using a high resolution that's possible of my scanner at 600 DPI. In case I decide to enlarge it for printing later. The next step is size. In my program, I can choose the size of the scan. You can set the original size from a list or use a custom size if your artwork is non standard. In this case, my artwork is larger than a four, which standard format, and I can just move the frame and scan only the middle part, but I would like to scan the whole work. So I will keep the check mark on use custom size. Also, I have here the rotation angle option, and it helps fine tune the scan area if you want to. But if you don't have this option, it's totally okay. You don't really need it. Now, choose where to save your scanned file. I recommend creating a special folder for your project or scans. It makes finding them much easier. For now, I just choose to scan to my desktop and name the files with the current date for easy sorting later. The next step is the format. The format depends on the purpose of your scan. For documents, PDF is just fine. For photos to share with family, JPG works nice, for optimal quality, choose TF, which preserves more information of the image. Some programs allow image correction during scanning. You can experiment with contrast and saturation settings to see the effects immediately. But I prefer to edit my work in photoshop directly because it's more flexible and I have more tools. Once everything is set, press the scan button, and let's scan now our images one by one with necessary settings. I've categorized my scanned works and we'll show you why. In my examples, I used two to three different materials meeting the criteria we discussed, black and white, color, transparent, and opaque. So now I have a work that is black and white, made with opaque materials. The second work is also black and white, but made with transparent materials, and it has texture. Next one is color and opaque made with ash and some markers. And the last one I made is also color but made with transparent materials like watercolor and color pencils. So I have this fine transitions and paper structure. For each category, I will explain the specifics of editing and photoshop and show you tools that you can use depending on which kind of work have you scanned. So now let's move on to the next lesson. 6. Scan Bigger Artworks: In this part of the course, I'll show you how to scan a piece of art work that's larger than your scanner. I'll be scanning an A three sized work. It's 297 by hundred 20 millimeters on a scanner that's half the size, which is typical for standard office. Many of you might have this kind of scanner at home. Using this example, I'll demonstrate how to scan your artwork in sections and then use Photoshop magic to merge these sections into one complete piece. The final result will look clean, neat and have good resolution. Here is how the entire artwork looks. To put it together, you'll need to scan it in three parts. Not just two, as you might think. Technically, yes, A four is half of a three, but to give photoshop enough information to merge these pieces seamlessly, you'll need to scan it in three sections. So I scan the bottom part, then the top part, and additionally, the middle section that overlaps both the top and bottom. This overlap is very important. Next, I open Photoshop, go to file automate photo merge. I leave the layout option in automatic mode and select files. I scan by clicking on browse. I find my files and select all three at once. After clicking open, they appear in the file list. The settings remain at their default, but it's crucial to make sure that the box next to blend image together is checked. I always recommend checking out the other settings as well just to be aware of the options available. For example, you can automatically fill in any gaps that might appear. But for now, I'll leave everything as it is, and you'll see the result with the basic settings. Now you can notice that Photoshop automatically processes the images, and in the end, we have three layers. All parts are seamlessly woven together. The image is currently horizontal, but I can easily rotate it by going to image image rotation, 90 degrees clockwise. If you zoom in and take a closer look, you won't be able to tell that it's made up of three sections. All watercolor transitions, pencil textures, and geometric details are perfectly preserved. We can see transparent strips along the edges, but we can easily remove those using tools like the crop tool, for example, which I'll talk about later. Alternatively, you could choose content feel transparent areas that we saw before in the settings. That would automatically feel in those areas. For now, I'll just save this image as a ti so I can continue editing it later. And of course, I'm waiting for you in the next class. 7. Learning About Color Modes: So now we scanned our artworks, and now we will compare the differences between them and talk a bit about color settings. I think this is very important topic because when I'm teaching at the art school, where I'm teaching, I often notice that the most people are struggling with this topic at the beginning. So let me. Let's see, the first piece we scanned was black and white image. If we zoom in real close, which I do using the hot keys command plus, you always see hot keys on the screen below. If I zoom in really close, I can check what color mode my image is in. Right now, I see pixels. Those same dots that make up any ster image. Here I see that all the pixels are black, white or gray. There's no color anywhere. You can also always check the color settings by going to image mode. Here you'll see color settings, and if there's no color information in the file, you'll see a check mark at gray scale. You can see the same word in the document title. Now let's compare this picture to the next one. If I zoom in a lot on this image, I'll choose the darkest place in the picture. In this black color. We see a lot of different colors that make up black, blues, greens, reds, and even yellows. This means the image was scanned in color mode and retains this information. Meanwhile, I can translate this image into black and white, but not other way around. I can translate the file itself into another color mode, such as GB or C YK. This way, I can then draw in color in this file. If I now go back to gray scale mode, I won't be able to add color. Only shades of gray. Please note that if you want to switch from one color mode to another, Photoshop will always warn you that changing the color mode might alter the appearance of the layers and will offer to flatten them. Choose don't flatten if you want to keep working with separate layers. Otherwise, all layers will merge into one, which is very inconvenient in most cases. How might the mode change the appearance of the work? In short, some colors might become dull. I'll explain why this happens a bit later. Let me remind you that if you are creating something for print, it's worth choosing CMYK. But if your work is intended only for digital media for screens like for social net works websites or apps, then you need RGB. Now let's look at the other files? How they got scanned. We'll move on to editing in the next lesson. So this file is in RGB mode. It was scanned automatically like this. If I now move to gray mode, look what happened. All color information is erase. The program even reports this when you change the mode. Okay. Let's look at the next image. This one is also currently in GB. In my experience, some bright or neon colors lose their intensity when scanned and can even completely change becoming flat and pale. The scanner lamp is very bright to evenly illuminate the entire surface of paper, which can affect color production. This work was done using watercolor and colored pencil. So it's transparent, and you can see the texture of the paper, as well as the pencil straws and watercolor effects. I want to keep all the effects while editing. And on this work, the brush structure and strokes are also clearly visible. Here, I will try to minimize it to get a maximum uniform surface. Using this color picture as an example, let's compare what will happen with the color, if I translate the file from RGB to CMYK. Please pay attention to the sharp change in color. This is how the work looked in RGB, and this is what it looks in CMYK. Now I'll explain why this happens. Let's look at this scheme. The circle itself that we see here. This is the visible color spectrum. The range that is perceived by our eye. It may vary slightly between different people, but in most cases, we distinguish quite a loyalty of colors with the eye. The field outlined by the yellow line is what can be displayed in GB. That's what almost any modern monitor or similar screens are capable of reproducing. The blue line in the middle is the range of CNY K. This is what we can get when printing. Here it is clearly seen that the colors are more dull and flat. That's why if I go back to my work and compare both options, we clearly see that in C YK, all colors look more dull. This should be considered in the work. If you plan to print your works, I advise you to translate them into sm k in time so that you can see all the colors and edit them so you don't get unpleasant surprises later. 8. Editing a Black and White Opaque Image: Let's start with editing the first image. It's black and white. It's looking pretty good already because it has a high contrast. First off, I used opaque material, so I already get a high contrast, and there are no smooth textures. And secondly, I scanned the image in black and white setting, so I don't have to get read of any unnecessary colors. One thing to pay attention to while editing images is how well it's been scanned. Do I need to crop the format? Are there any weird stripes on the sides? Did the paper shift while scanning? If the paper is light, it can easily move when you close the scanner lid. For example, I can see that I have such a stripe that I don't need here. I need to get rid of it. Moreover, I want to point out that I didn't clean the glass of my printer very well. Now on the scanned work, we can see spots that apparently remained on the glass from previous scanning. I decided not to scan again, but to show you on this example how you can get rid of such mistakes. If we look at other scanned works, I will unfortunately see this black dots everywhere. In this work, I'll edit the format. In my opinion, the easiest and fastest way to edit the format or rotate the image is to use the crop tool. We can select it on the toolbar or by pressing C on the keyboard. Now we see a frame that can be moved. I'll zoom in on the image a bit. I usually zoom in with the command plus k combination. Then by pressing the space bar, I can move around my workspace very easily. I zoomed in a bit on the image to be more accurate. Now, I just decrease this frame as much as I need to. I always advise to look closely at all sides of the image. When everything is ready, you can press enter and the frame will disappear, cropping the format as we need. Our picture now looks much neater. After we've dealt with the format, let's decide what to do with those black dots that appeared here during scanning. There are several ways to get rid of them. The easiest way to do this is if we have an opaque background without any texture. Like in this example. Just a white background. I'm not planning to cut it out. In this case, you can even take a brush tool and choose the background color, white color in this case. Don't forget to create a new layer, please. I always advise to not change the original image and to create copies or new layers for all changes. This way, if anything goes wrong, you can always delete necessary layer and return to a more suitable version. So let's go back to the brush. Right clicking on the workspace, I can call up it settings. Also, brush settings are available here in the upper control panel. I can make the brush a bit bigger variety hardness and shape. In this case, I need a simple brush with fairly hard edges. Now, I'll work with this brush on a new layer and mask all unnecessary dots that bother me. Or you can get rid of pencil traces this way. I'll repeat again, this option works only for absolutely smooth surfaces without any structure. What to do with structural surfaces, we will find out on the examples of the following images. Now our image looks clean. Let's compare how it looked before. Next to the layer name, you can turn off and on the icon. So we see the original version of the picture. We looked at the simplest version of image editing. Another way to get rid of dirt in the image is to use the clown stamp tool, which is S button on the keyboard. I can use it on a new layer. It needs to be used on the same layer because this tool takes a sample or probe from the correct surface and applies it to the place we're editing. It replaces it. For such a purpose, I always highly recommend you to make copies of the original layer. After that, you can turn off the bottom layer by clicking on the ei symbol. Now you can work with the copies, so you won't be taking risks, and if something goes wrong, you can always delete the ruined layer. Let's pay attention to how this tool works. Firstly, I press the option or Out key on the keyboard and click first on a clean place. Then click again on the place that needs to be edited, but not holding option or Out key anymore. This way, I take a probe from a clean space and apply it to the dirty one. When you apply the stamp, you can notice a plus sign next to the brush. It shows where the probe is taken from at the moment. So this tool takes pixels from one place and paste them into another. You can also adjust the size and hardness of the tool, like it was with the brush. Well, I've got another edited version of this work ready. In this lesson, you became familiar with two ways to edit a simple black and white, contrasting image. We can compare the before and after versions by clicking on the symbol in our layers. These tools are very easy to use. With their help, you can quickly achieve the result. When we've finished editing, we can save the image in any required format. To do this, we select file and then save a copy. First, choose where to save the image. In the drop down menu, you'll see a list of formats. So if we want to continue working on this file later and need to keep all the layers, we should choose the PST format. This is Photoshop standard format. If you're completely done with editing and need to save the image for social media, a website, or to send it to someone for reviewing, you can choose GBG. This will make the file much lighter and smaller, but you won't be able to edit individual layers anymore. You can also save the file in P and G format, which maintains image quality and is useful if the image has a transparent background. If you want to kip the layers but need a smaller file than PSG, you can choose TI. It also allows for saving layers, but it's easier to view on different computers without opening photoshop. Choose the format that suits you best and I'll see you in the next lesson. 9. Editing a Black and White Transparent Image: In this lesson, let's look at the following piece of work. It's a black and white piece created using more transparent materials. The structure and tching are visible, and it was scanned with color settings. Let's see how it's different from the previous work. Apart from the presence of colors, there's a clear need to work on the contrast. Currently, the blacks or shadows are not as deep or as contrasting as they might be. So after we've determined the format using crop tool, we can move on to editing the black dust spots. We don't have any structure here either. So we can use the same tools. We got familiar with in the previous lesson. To avoid such work, let me remind you how important it is to wipe the scanner glass before scanning. Now we will increase the contrast in this work as it las ad. I suggest using an adjustment layer for this. Please find the circle symbol divided in half. It is in the area with your layers right on the bottom. Here, you will find different processing tools. To add contrast to the work, I usually use levels. Click on levels in the list. You will see a window with the settings for this function. We see different sliders here. The darkest one on the left is for shadows. The darkest shades in our image. The middle gray slider is for mid tones in the image, and correspondingly, the bright, right one is for light. The lower sliders also respond to lighting, but for the whole image. In this case, we need to make the dark tones darker and the light ones a bit lighter. This will add the necessary contrast to our work. I always start by slightly increasing the amount of light in the image and try to strengthen the dark tones a bit. I try to make small changes and see if they are enough. How much you change the strength of the tones depends on your work and your goal. Try different options and assess which one suits your work more. Also, if there's structure in your work, make sure that it doesn't disappear after manipulating the levels. The structure of the paper is also conveyed through the relation of shadows and light. I think I'll stick with this version. It seems to me that it best meets my expectations for this work. Here you can clearly see all the strokes and texture, and it was important to me. Also, you can notice that some dirt has disappeared, thanks to this processing. This happened because I added light to the light tones. It's important not to overdo it with adding light. The structure may completely disappear. Let's compare the results again before and after editing. It's clear that the word now looks much cleaner and neater. It can now be easily used for fther projects, for instance, in mockups or on a website or on social media. So now, when our work is cleaned from unnecessary elements and dots, I want to show you on this example how you can get rid of the white background. Let's say we want to place this picture on another background, some colored one. At the same time, it's important for me to keep all the shrugs and smooth transitions. For this purpose, I need to completely get rid of the white background. Make it so that the background is completely transparent. There are several ways to do this. I will show you the ones I use very often. First of all, I create a copy of the layer. Now I want to completely select all the white color so that I can delete it later. So I go to the selection menu color range. Here, I use the eye dropper and click on the color that needs to be selected. At this stage, we see the stings for this function. If you have a check symbol in the box under the picture for selection, then everything that will be selected will be shown in black. If I move the slider, I see how much color and its shades will be selected. In the drop down window at the top, you can select the color that should be highlighted. You can also select only light midtones and shadows. In the case of this image, I need to select the maximum amount of white color. For this purpose, I move the slider all the way to the right. The selection is ready. We see marching s that I call them. So everything worked. Now I can just press the delete button and everything that was selected will simply be deleted. This is quite an invasive method, but since we made a copy, we don't lose anything and can always return to the original. As soon as the background is deleted, we can remove the selection. Select D select or command D on the keyboard. This is the result that we have. To check if everything has been removed, you can create a new layer under the picture and feel it with any color. To do this, I choose a color, then the paint bucket tool and click it on the new layer. Now you can evaluate the work. It seems to me that I deleted too much structure. The hatching became poorly visible. Now I will do all the same again and this time, we'll not move the slider to the end. Now let's compare both options. In the second version, the structure was preserved much better. So the easiest way to remove the background is to select the background color using the color selection tool and simply delete it. So Another method to get rid of the background color is to work with masks. When we create a mask, we don't destroy the image itself, but rather hide its part under the mask and can always return it back. Let's see how this can be done. The first steps will be the same. I'm looking on the layer. I go to the selection, color range, select the color I need, select the range here and click on, Okay. Now I have all the white color space selected that I want to get you rid of. Now I need to, while staying in any selection tool, for example, in this one, rectangular selection, click the right mouse button and click on Select and verse. This way, now I have black surfaces selected, not white. The next step, I have to find a mask symbol at the bottom of the layers area. It's a rectangle with a circle inside, and click on it. Look how the major addens. A mask appeared here and it hit everything that was not selected. Therefore, it was important to invert our selection. Everything that was not selected is hidden now under the mask, and everything that was selected remain. Now if I want to clarify something in this section, then I can click on the mask symbol, select black and white colors on the tool panel or D on the keyboard. And now you can take a brush while I use white, I can return something from under the mask. And if I take black, then I can hide parts of the image again. Brush parameters can also be changed as convenient. I can, for example, completely remove this element, but it will not be erased. It will just be hidden. I can take the white brush again and return it. But please notice that in this way, I will return it along with the background since it's also hidden under the mask. Therefore, when it comes to such thin lines or structures, working with a mask may not always be optimal. However, modern versions of Photoshop have features that can help us in this situation. Look, we can view the properties of the mask. If your properties panel is closed, you can open it by going to the window menu and selecting properties. While the mask is selected, you'll see a frame around it. Please compare now the layer itself is selected, and we can see its properties, but now I've selected the mask again. Now we can click on Select and Mask. This opens a new window with settings. Here you can find various brushes, including the refined edge brush tool, which we'll be using. Let's look at the settings on the right. If I now remove the masks opacity, you can see the layer with or without the background. Now I apply the brush and after the program analyzes the image, only the outline we need remains. If the result isn't quite right, you can tweak the settings. They depend a lot on your image. So try experimenting on your own. This will help you to get better at erstging the settings. When everything is ready, I press okay and here's the version of the image without the background. Now I can place the image on any color background I need. And it's time to save this file. I save a copy of the file and choose the PG format, which allows the background to stain transparent, and the image size won't be too large. The PST format also preserves the transparent background, but because it saves all the layers, it will be significantly larger. This is how the file looks in PNG format. Everything I process and the transparent background are here. Now you can confidently use the file further. And I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson to show how to edit a color file made with Opaque materials. 10. Editing a Colored Opaque Image: So here we are in this lesson, and I want to show you how to edit a colorful piece made with pac materials. If you look at the file name, you'll see it's in EGB mode. So I'm going to edit this image to use it on my for social media or even as a phone wallpaper. First, I am to remove any unwounded dirt left from scanning and adjust the format slightly. I also want to work on the background texture because it's currently too loud with unwounded stripes and brush strobes. Additionally, I plan to clean up areas where the paint bled over the edges and fix spots where the paint application was poor. I also plan to make a small color correction to make the colors warmer and brighter, especially in the background. Let's start with the format. This tool doesn't just crop the edges, I can also rotate the canvas. You can align it using horizontal and vertical lines. If you need to crop just a bit, you might have to zoom in a lot. Now it's time to clean up all the dirt and spots. The image is colorful, and I still want to look like an analog work. I want to calm the background texture a bit, but not remove it entirely. For this, I can use either the clone stamp tool or a healing brush tool. L et's compare them. With the Clone Stamp tool as in previous lessons, I take a sample and apply it to the area I want to add it. It looks good at first glance, but if you look closer, you can sometimes see a circular mark. Adding a bit of softness to the brush edges helps. But it's hard to completely avoid the marks or repetitive patterns. For textured works, I prefer using the spot healing brush tool or the healing brush tool. The clone stamp tool, copies, image parts, and masks imperfections, while healing brush tool also optimizes the edited spot based on the surroundings. Let's see what happens. It's not even noticeable that the area was edited. I can experiment with the settings to find what works best for the particular piece. With the spot healing brush tool, I don't even need to take a sample. The tool analyzes the image and edit it just when I click. The brush settings are also crucial and are selected based on the task. Try this tools and find the best solution for your tasks. The remove tool is an E based and can even remove larger objects, you select a brush slightly larger than the element that you want to remove. Run it over and it disappears without a ras. This works even on uneven backgrounds and is great for larger elements. Please note that for this tool, the brush size is adjusted only in the top control panel. With one of these tools, you can always achieve the optimal result. I'll refine some areas on my image now and try to remove this rough brush max that I don't like. By switching tools, I achieve the best result for myself. Each has its specifics, and the more you use them in various works, the better you understand when and how to apply them. Now I like how the image looks. Next, I'd like to add more warm colors and make them more harmonious with each other. If I try to use color selection, it won't work very good in this case because there are elements of very similar colors. To isolate just the pink background, I'll use the relatively new tool. It's object selection tool. If the tool doesn't recognize all the elements I want to select, I'll use the Quick Selection tool as well, which is suitable for well defined areas. To add new selection parts to an existing selection, I press shift. And click on the element. To remove something from selection, I'll press the alt or option key. Now all elements on the pink background are selected. Next, I need to invert the selection to isolate just the background, not the objects on it. Write leak and choose s inverse. Now only the background is selected. At this stage, I can do anything with it like filling it with color. But then it's no longer looks like an analog work. But I still want to edit the background color a bit. I go to layers and create a new adjustment layer, specifically selective color. In the properties of this tool, I can adjust colors separately. For example, I choose the red color. Remember, thanks to the selection, I'm only editing the background. The elements themselves won't change now. If I choose red, I see the components of this color. They are con, magenta, yellow, and black. With sliders, I can add or remove a shade. Notice then I remove con from red, it becomes more pink and warm and adding it back makes it more green or even gray. See how much change occurs when I add magenta because red initially contains a lot of magenta. So by using this slider, I enhance it. Removing it completely turns the background almost yellow, adding or removing black makes the red shades lighter or darker. I like this cooler version of the background. It adds more contrast within the background and the picture elements. The same can be done for other colors. The changes are most noticeable in the most abundant color. Also, you can work with lights, shadows, and mid tones. The result depends on the tone of the image. If this picture were converted to black and white, the background would be gray. So when I change the mid tones, they change the most. Now when I found the suitable option, let's compare the edited image with the original. Now it's more vibrant and bright. In principle, you can edit any element in the picture like this. The next step is to edit the elements where the paint was poorly applied. I use the object selection tool again. Now I create a new layer, and on it, I will paint other the space with an ordinary brush. However, I'll reduce its opacity and increase its size. Using the eye dropper, I take the color I need from the image and paint within the selection. So now we can see this color much better. Also, let's pay attention to blending modes. Choosing the right one can help maintain the brush texture and enhance the s. Now I'll do the same with the other yellow elements and then with the white ones. Well, now I like the image. If desired, you can still experiment with settings, for example, with levels and saturation. Now if we compare the original with the edited version, we see a clear difference. The picture was quite pale with a lot of dirt and irregularities. Now it's more vibrant, bright, and smooth while still maintaining an analog style. The next lesson will be about transparent colored picture. So see you there. 11. Editing a Colored Transparent Image: The latest image I scan is also a colored one, made with transparent materials like watercolor and colored pencils. In this image, we'll revisit some tools we've already used. I'll also show you how to preserve the texture of the paper and soft watercolor transitions editing. As usual, the first thing I did was make a copy of the layer. The first thing that catch my eye in this work besides black dots are shadows of the paper. This can happen if the scanner lit wasn't pressed down well. If the paper is very dense and has water waves, or if you're scanning something with bulky elements like a collage, you can wait down the scanner lit with books or hold it down with your hand. Additionally, I would like to make the yellow color in this work warmer, and the other colors more saturated. So they stand out against the background. At the same time, it's very important here to preserve the structure of the paper itself. So it's clear that it's water color on paper, and also that here is a structure of pencil. First and foremost, I'll create a new adjustment layer levels. I'll adjust the contrast with it. This will help get rid of shadows. The frame I left around the motive is the lightest color in the picture. I'm using the slider to enhance the light. As a result, the whole image has become a little brighter. I will also minimally make the midtones a bit lighter. Almost all the shadow is gone. But the texture of the paper is still noticeable, which is good. Now it's time to remove all the artifacts. And since the texture is important here, I'm using tools from the healing brush category. It also helps to choose the right brush size. To make changes unnoticeable, choose a brush slightly larger than what you're removing. So I've removed the Roths mistakes. Now I'll edit the color. Again, I choose selective color, and I only choose yellow. This time, I'll be editing the entire image. Look how dramatically the picture changes. I'm adding more yellow and reducing the amount of other colors like magenta and Con. This makes it warmer and more pleasant. I do the same with blue shades to make them more saturated. In this case, I'm adding ion and slightly reducing magenta, so the color is greener rather than purple, and I'll experiment a little with red color. Okay. Now I think I like the editing result. Please take a note. This work is now in C YK mode. As you can see, you can achieve quite saturated colors here too. Okay, I think it looks great, all textures and beautiful watercolor transitions are preserved. Of course, you can continue editing, but that depends on your work and the goal you want to achieve. Now, you have the basic tools to reach the goal. 12. Using Mockups: So in this bonus lesson, I'm going to show you a great way to present your work, whether it's to clients or on your website or social media. We're going to use mockups for this. There are various ways to use them, and you can find who websites dedicated to mobs. I want to show you a fairly classic and simple method. I will download a mockup and we will use Photoshop again. Let's start by downloading a suitable mockup. I like websites like Mockup World or unblest, but there are many others choose the ones you like the best. Of course, if you need mockup for commercial projects, you should buy them. People put a lot of time into creating mockups, but for praxs or personal use, you can always find good free options. So in this case, I'd like to see how one of my pictures would look in an interview. I'll search for integer, choose the option. I like best. I see something with color similar to one of my works. Here we see a minimalistic stylish interger. My work will fit well into it. I'll be able to insert my work into this frame. The mockup description will give you information about its size and format. Sometimes they are mockups for other programs, but we need one for photoshop, so look for PSD format. Now we can download it and open it in Photoshop. First and foremost, look at the layers. Here I see the picture itself and the layer where we can put our image. The special mocker player is what's called a smart object, which you can edit very flexibly and non destructively. Smart objects are often used in mockups, so the whole picture doesn't have to be edited. You change only a mocker player, which you can identify by a small symbol in the corner. It's an image symbol with a small rectangle in the corner. Now I can double click on it, which opens a new file where I will place my image. Anything I do inside this document, the Smart object, will then appear in the frame in the main document. But first, all changes must be saved. For example, what I just drew, now, I press command S, go back to the main document, and you can see my drawing has appeared in the frame. Now I will delete this example and I can place my illustration here. I'd like to put this bright picture that I worked on earlier. I'll just drag it inside the open document, press enter to confirm save the image. Now let's see what we got. We see the following problem. The format of my illustration does not fit this mock up. In this example, I want to show you how to solve a problem like this, at least with images with a uniform background. To do this, let's do the following. My picture was imported as a smart object as well. But in this case, it's not needed. I can right click on it and sorize layer. Now it's just a regular layer in Photoshop. And now, right in this file, we will extend the background. For this, I will use the generative fill tool. I take the selection tool, rectangular Mark tool, select the unfiled space with it. Now I choose edit content aware fiel. This is also an AI based tool. By clicking on it, I've opened an additional window with its set of tools. Right away, we see a warning or rather a tip from the program about what to do. Here, you need to select the sampling brush tool and highlight the area based on which the empty place will be filled. Let's look closer. I take the sampling brush tool, here it is, and now I use it not in the space itself. I don't draw with it, but I show the program where it should take the example to feel the empty area from. If we now look at the result, we can see that the top part of the picture is now also filled, and it looks great. There are no sharp transitions or stripes, no any traces. I do the same for the lower part of the image. It's better to choose a space closer to the selected area. Otherwise, some distortions may occur. For example, if you take a sample from the top of the image, the space will be filled incorrectly. Apparently, the top of the picture is significantly darker. Well, now the rest. Well, I confirm and di select and save this file with command S. This is how it now looks inside the mockup. Now, if necessary, I can still make some changes. For example, I would like to slightly reduce the contrast of the picture itself in the mockup so that it fits more naturally into the environment. I choose the adjustment layer again. Now, I pay attention to changes that occur in the entire picture, but I need to change only the image in the frame. So I choose the layer, right click on it, and select the option, create a clipping mask. After that, you will see a small arrow down. This means that now this layer only applies to the layer it is pointing to, to the layer below. Now I change only the picture itself. So I'm happy with the result, and now this image can be posted on social media or on web page or added to portfolio. So people can understand what you offer or how to use your work. Again, I want to remind you that it is always important to pay attention to the license of the mockup. Everything you find on the Internet is protected by copyright. Always carefully look at the conditions under which you can use a particular product, whether it's a font photo or mockup. Well, I'm very glad that we've come this far together and that the skills will be useful to you during your work. You guys are just great for doing it, for giving time and attention to digitizing of your artwork. 13. Final Words: Congratulations on reaching the end of the course. I'm thrilled to have shared this journey with you, and I hope you've gained valuable skills and insights. Let's recap what we've learned and how you can continue to apply these techniques to your work. Now you know how to scan your analog artworks properly, ensuring they are high quality and ready for any use. You also learned how to adjust scanner settings to maintain the quality of your artwork, making sure colors and details are preserved. We covered tools like the spot healing brush tool or the healing brush tool to remove dirt and imperfections, keeping your work looking presti. Using tools like selective color and levels, you can enhance your artwork so it stands out on social media or in your professional portfolio. We also explore techniques to keep the texture of your paper and soft transitions in your watercolor and pencil works. From the corrupt tool to object selection and color range selection, you've become familiar with essential photoshop tools that make editing efficient and effective. You also learned what are adjustment layers and masks. These non destructive editing techniques allow you to make changes while preserving the original image, giving you flexibility and control. And in the bonus lesson, you learned how to use mock ups to present your artwork professionally. I'd really love to see your finished project. Share them here on Skillshare and on social media. Just take me on Instagram, and I will be happy to feature your work on my profile. And of course, the more you practice, the techniques, the more confident you'll become. Experiment with different materials and tools to see what works best for you. I also prepared a working sheet for you that you can find in the downloads. There you can find all the tools I showed you during the class. You can open it every time you forgot something. Thank you very much for joining me in this course. I hope you feel inspired and equipped to continue digitizing your artwork with confidence and creativity. Keep creating, keep experimenting, and most importantly, have fun with it. And if you are interested in my other classes, you can always find them in my profile. So see you around and goodbye.