Forum Moderators: phranque
I had just (probably naively) thought I could ask her to produce the artwork on high quality white paper and then I could scan it into a png graphic.
Why would this method not be the best way forward?
I have two main concerns:
1. I would like to produce a scalable vector graphic
2. I want a pure white background which I don't feel I would get if I scanned a piece of paper. Or can most art software "see" there's nothing on the white paper and leave the background as pure white and not put in some "off white" colour?
would appreciate any feedback on this subject.
Getting the background to pure white is pretty easy as long as the paper is as near to brilliant white as possible (eg not cream). Port the image into Photoshop (or similar) and play with the brightness and contrast settings until you have pure white on the background.
If you end up with a strange colour/contrast balance doing that, it's out with the magic wand, cut as much of it out as possible, then use the eraser with an airbrush setting to feather out the edges.
I have always had great success with using brightness/contrast settings alone though, where the background is plain white paper. A decent scanner helps.
When you've finished editing up the images, experiment with .gif and .jpeg settings to get the best filesize/quality combination. Generally I find jpeg better for non-vector images, but always worth experimenting.
Once you have your blank white background, if you need to sit the image on any other colour background, Photoshop has a great feature where you can "multiply" two colours together mathematically. White is effectively a "0", so it ends up replacing the entire white background with your new chosen colour.
To do that, create a new layer underneath the main image, fill the entire layer with the new colour, then on the main image layer select "multiply" as a layer display property.
TJ
Oh yeah. And it's free. :-D
