Scanning watercolors

[magnetic-porcupine]

I've taken pictures of my watercolor comic for an online application. As expected, the colors were muted and dark. I tried correcting that by tweaking the brightness and contrast in photoshop and setting the layer on multiply before duplicating it.

It still doesn't look as impressive as the one done traditionally though ): Normally I wouldn't really bother with attaining identical quality but this application means a lot to me so I'd like to make my portfolio as presentable as possible.

What changes do you usually make to a piece of traditional work in photoshop to make it attain its original quality? Is there any button/toggle I'm missing out?

Thanks!

[eishiya]

I use an Overlay layer when I need to add oomph to colour traditional works. Sometimes just duplicating the image and setting it to Overlay on the original does the trick, sometimes I skip that entirely and just paint in some of my own colours to adjust what's there.
Overlay takes darker colours on that layer and Multiplies them, and Screens lighter colours. The overall effect is to increase contrast and saturation, but depending on the colours you use, it can do a lot of different things. I think it's worth playing with extensively.

Another thing I do is a low-opacity Gaussian blur to soften some of the texture (which isn't always desirable).

[Ddraigeneth]

In addition, actual scanners tend to give better results than a camera since you don't have any light or angle distortion. At least it would give you a better base to work from. (Assuming that's what you meant by "taken pictures.")

[eishiya]

Ddraigeneth: Scanners distort colours too due to problems with their light censors. A properly-lit photo of a painting tends to look better than a scan, actually. Most of us just don't have the means/expertise to take good photos like that.

[Ddraigeneth]

True. I've had to photograph some pieces because they were too large to scan, and they came out fine. For the average person though, I would think scanning is a lot simpler.

[mintyfreshmangos]

Huh. I never have any problems with watercolors! Usally a very simple level or curves adjustment would do.

I have a crap scanner. Not even a standalone one, it's one of those 3-in-1 printers that happen to have a scanner attached to it. Also it's around 10+ years old.
So when I scan anything, it looks like this:


That is pretty horrible.
So CTRL+L to bring up the level adjustments from this:

to this:

And that is usually all I have to do. This is fairly true to color.

Final product:



If you want you can also color balance it with CTRL+B.
Here is an example of what color balance CAN do if you want. This is NOT AT ALL true to color but CB is useful if your want to fix colors post-production:



I don't know what is your Photoshop level but if you want to know more about lvl adjustment, this is a good read: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/levels.htm

Hope that helped? :D

[magnetic-porcupine]

eishiya and mintyfreshmangos: Thanks you're a lifesaver 8D I tried using both methods but I must say the level adjustments worked great! Thanks so much I never knew you could use that or overlay

ddraigeneth: haha yeah I normally scan in traditional work but the pieced always turn out overexposed. I think photographs are supposed to be better but I can never seem to take pictures right >:

[Patroness]

I don't use watercolors a lot, but I use copics, which my scanner too murders. What generally works for me is not to tweak it on the brightness and contrast menu, but to use the Curves menu and use the bottom sliders. That generally does the trick, along with a bit of burning and dodging.
Best of luck!

[maplebee]

Try playing with the Levels instead of Brightness/Contrast. This allows you to brighten the picture without the colours getting lighter.