07.19.09
Preparing images for publishing
Many times, when trying to come up with a new design idea, I will review my drawing notebooks for ideas. Today, I found a drawing of my dog Lucy in colored pencil that would make a nice poster or other product.
Original scan of my Lucy drawing
After scanning the original drawing at 300dpi and saving the image, I start by making a duplicate layer, leaving the original image intact and hidden. If you make a mistake or change your mind you don’t have to start all over again. The duplicate layer can easily deleted. That way you can experiment with different styles and filters but still have the option of going back to the original design.
Usually, scanned pencil drawings will need to be darkened and enhanced to look good for printing, in my opinion. I often use the automatic color correction and color variations in Adobe Photoshop Elements to darken and enhance the image. To create the oval border, I use the select tool to create an oval around the design then invert the selection and fill it with color. To make the image suitable for a large poster, I increased the image size to 11″ x 16.5″. Save a copy of the image as a png file for uploading. If you are going to be using the image for email or the web, also make a jpg copy.
This is my published image on Zazzle.com
Creating Zazzle Posters - rosiesworkshop.com Blog said,
July 20, 2009 at 9:54 pm
[...] how to use the Poster design tool. After I prepared the images for publishing, as I talked about in Preparing Images for Publishing, I uploaded the images to Zazzle to start making some posters. I had a few posters that I created [...]