Artist reproductions: How to scan, prep and print your fine art

This is a broad overview of the scanning and printing process for artists working on flat surfaces (though 3d art or sculpture could be captured in a similar way). If you have questions or would like more detail on a certain section, always feel free to comment below, or contact me directly.

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Scanning

Flat-bed scanners are a low-cost way of digitizing your artwork, but you’ll find that it will only work for relatively small pieces. A more flexible solution is to use a digital camera on either a copy-stand, or a tripod configured to mount the camera below where the legs meet. This will suffice for pieces up to 16 or 20 inches across, but you can also mount larger work on a wall or table stand and take the pictures perpendicular to it. Another option is to take many overlapping images of your work and stitching them together in software. The epic resolution is amazing if you can cope with the epic file size.

I find a hot-shoe mounted spirit level is very useful to make sure the camera is perpendicular to the work, though you can also use a mirror - if you can see back down your camera lens in the mirror, the camera is in the correct orientation.

You can use any lens you have, but a macro lens has the benefit of having a flatter plane of focus that is just what you need for copy work. Don’t forget to use lens corrections in your editing software. This will counter any pinch or barrel distortions your lens might render.

Tethering the camera to the computer makes like so much easier. And if you have a series of works to scan, you can do it in a batch using guides on the live-view so that you can crop them in one action when editing. Capture One is well known for it’s tethering prowess, but I find the tether software your camera manufacturer provides is generally pretty good. I use the EOS utility for my Canon camera and was surprised by how good it was. Very underrated.

A grey card is a valuable tool for setting a good exposure and for setting the correct white-balance in editing software. Use a low ISO like 100 for the least digital noise, a middle-aperture like f8 to get the best sharpness from your lens, and then pick the shutter speed that centers the exposure needle. Low shutter speeds are fine because your camera is not hand-held and your subject isn’t moving.

Shoot RAW for the most flexibility, but if you are confident with your exposures and white-balance, shooting JPEG will save a lot of time and require simpler software.

Better still is to use a color-calibration tool like the Spyder Checkr. This matches a calibrated color-swatch to the pixel readouts on your computer monitor for the most accurate color reproduction of your work. It will save a lot of printer ink compared to a trial and error method.

Light sources can be tricky so remember these concepts:

1. The farther away the light-source the more even it will light your work. A well lit-room usually works, but setting up continuous or strobe lighting gives you more control.

2. The larger the light-source relative to the work the more gradational the transition from highlight to shadow.

3. Like in billiards, the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. Have the light angled so it doesn’t reflect straight back into the camera. A 45 degree angle to the camera is a great place to start.

4. For even light, use a light source both left and right of the work, the same distance and power setting.

5. If you want a more textured result, lower the lights so the light skims across the surface of the work, and play with altering the relative power of just one of the two lights. The relative orientation of the relief in your piece and the lights will make a big difference.

If the work is behind glass, remove the glass from the frame to prevent unnecessary glare or reflections. If you are competent with vector-graphic software like Affinity Design or Adobe Illustrator, you can mock-up a mat or a frame so that you can create a digital final-product image rather than mount all your work by hand. See the images in my Print Store as an example.

Processing

A good print starts with an accurate representation of your scan on your computer screen. You can calibrate your monitor for accurate color using a tool such as these from Datacolor and Calibrite.

A good global edit usually means setting your brightness slider so that the histogram is centered. Then set the black and white points so that are almost, but not quite, clipping. Of course, if you have a very dark, or very bright piece of work, your histogram should reflect that. Most software have lens-correction and perspective-correction tools to make sure the angular relationships in the final image honor that of the original piece.

Crop the image to the edge of the artwork, or to a desired aspect ratio for printing. If you are matting the prints, you’ll have to use a standard aspect ratio to fit store-bought matts or you can make custom mats to best honor your art.

You can use local editing tools like a spot healer to remove any dust or a gradient tool to remove any uneven light. I’d avoid removing imperfections of the artwork itself as you want to avoid misrepresenting your work to your buyer.

Printing

Two options here. Cheap and cheerful, or pricy and archival. Be clear with your buyer about which they are receiving. Cheerful means you can use a dye-based printer (vibrant, but will fade relatively fast) and low-cost photo paper which may yellow with time. Archival means using pigment-based inks and acid-free paper. These prints are the best we have at present, and the technology hasn’t existed long enough to know if they will last as long as the old darkroom prints.

Owning a printer is a lot of work you might not be expecting. They need to run constantly to avoid costly clogs, and some use a good amount of ink just for cleaning cycles. The ink ranks among the most expensive fluids in the world, and you need to use your manufacturer’s ink. Third party ink may seem like a bargain, but they will fade faster than OEM and will be less color accurate. You can’t do that to your buyer. Also, the 13x19” and 16x20” printers you are likely to choose take up a lot of space and are heavy.

But printing at home has some advantages - you can experiment, print on demand and sign your work before shipping. These things are harder to do with a drop-shipping service.

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A simple way to cut a mat for a frame (and how to bottom-weight the mat)

Cutting a custom mat for your photographs or artwork is simple and requires only a few specialized tools. I recommend a good mat cutter such as a Logan 2000,  and a compatible straight edge which can be used as a guide for the mat cutter (see recommendations at the bottom of this post). Last, you need some scrap mat board for support underneath the mat you wish to cut, and a healing cutting mat to protect your table surface. 

Before you begin to cut your mat, you need to figure out the size of the window that will hold the print.  I like to have the window a quarter of an inch smaller than the paper sides along each side. So with an 8 by 10 piece of paper I would cut a window 7 1/2 by 9 1/2 inches to leave a quarter of an inch overlap so the print does not fall through the window. Sometimes I like to print my image smaller than the window so there is a quarter of an inch gap between the image and the mat (in which case I would print the image 7 by 9 in). 

Work on the back of the mat. 

1. Starting at the top left of your mat you can mark out the window width across the top of the mat. The remaining width represents both the left and right borders. So to figure out only the right border, divide this remainder by two and draw a vertical line with your pencil at that position. 

2. We can do the same for the bottom border by marking the window height from the top left and then dividing the remaining highlight by two. Draw a horizontal line at this point.

3. Now that the right and bottom boarders are marked, we can use the intersection of a lines as of the bottom-right origin from which we can mark out the window height and the window width. Mark out the final lines for left and top borders.

4. The window is now ready to be cut out with the mat cutter. The image is perfectly centered in the mat.

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The problem is that a centrally placed image looks poorly balanced to the viewer. This is an optical illusion. It looks more balanced if the image is placed a little higher than center. When an image has a thicker bottom border than at the top, we call it a” bottom weighted” mat. 

5. A simple way to increase the bottom of border in proportion to the size of the image and the size of the mat is to draw a line from the window height mark on the left hand of the mat  to the original bottom border line intersects the right hand of the mat.  

6. The bottom-right origin point for the window is now where this diagonal line intersects the vertical line. 

7. The bottom weighted mat is more visually satisfying and looks distinctly better than any mats you’d find in a commercial frame.

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This construction technique is useful for the first mat you cut for a given mat and window size. You now have the border measurements for any subsequent identical mats you need to cut. 

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None more black - The shadows of a Caravaggio painting

The usual vibrant reproduction of "The Calling of St Matthew".

It is interesting that, if you think about it, a picture doesn't end at its frame. That is why looking at a picture on your computer, and the same picture in a museum can provoke different emotions. Your computer screen is surrounded my what ever is on your wall, but art in a museum is often purposefully lit, with the architecture of the room and surrounding artworks that frame the mind.

Caravaggio was a renaissance painter who used light and shadow as characters in his compositions. His style can be described as chiaroscuro - literally 'clear' and 'dark'. I might have underestimated how dark his pictures can be when seen in their intended setting as opposed to in a book or on a screen.

A simulation of the painting by natural church window light as it looks in Rome.

I recently had the opportunity to see a Caravaggio close-up. 'The calling of St Matthew' is one of three Caravaggios in San Luigi dei Francesi, a church in the center of Rome. An image ripe with metaphor and foreshadowing, the Christ figure points to call a reluctant disciple with a hand that closely resembles the hand of God in Michelangelo's 'creation of Adam' (physically located just across the river in the Vatican). The Caravaggian twist is to place this hand in a dark room with tax collectors in 17th century dress rather than a fantastical scene of clouds and cherubs.

What is interesting is that, though the picture is lit in the church with artificial lights on a coin-operated timer, when the light goes out the painting is only lit by a small window on a nearby wall. In this natural lighting, the painting is so dim, the mid-tones of the painting become part of the deep shadows. All that remains are the brightest parts of the image.

There is significantly more scuro than chiaro in the real world setting. The reproductions in books are trying to preserve the details of the picture at the expense of the shadowy reality of the physical space around the original.

The remaining highlights show the artist's focus in the painting - the had of Jesus, the perceptiveness of the youngest boy to the event, the cross-frame on the window. The bowed head of Matthew is so dark it can barely be seen. The light is not on him yet. Perhaps if the scene was painted a few seconds later...