Cleaning Up Line Drawings

D
Posted By
doyle60
Dec 21, 2004
Views
150
Replies
1
Status
Closed
What is the best way to clean up line drawings, with cross-hatching, in Photoshop? I have some old artwork from the 19th century I would like to clean up for printing in a magazine.

The background should be white, of course, but mine has some coloring from aging. I’m working with, sadly, photocopies, and it is the best I can do.

To make a white background, I chose this area with a certain variance and Photoshop did a good job of not selecting the black or dark grays. With this area chosen, I than swiped my eraser tool over the image and cleaned it right up in a nanosecond.

It looks good on the screen. But will a printed version look good in a magazine? My method must have deleted some good grays, even if very light. The lines are now very rasterized, black and dark grays against white, but no light grays to soften the lines. My tutorial on rasterized images tells me that these light grays to mid grays soften the curve and, quite paradoxically, make the line sharper.

I used a 400 dpi file, I believe. Would it help to begin with a finer image? This is for black and white magazine printing. Or will this just be lost on the printer?

Should I use a different methodology?

Thanks,

Matt

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MC
MArtin Chiselwitt
Dec 21, 2004
I hope this helps, a great tutorial that changed my own method when dealing with clean up and line art:

http://www.pensnpixels.com/tutorials/flatting.htm

happy xmas,

mart

How to Master Sharpening in Photoshop

Give your photos a professional finish with sharpening in Photoshop. Learn to enhance details, create contrast, and prepare your images for print, web, and social media.

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