More on my earlier blog "An Alternative to Digitally Photographing Your Painting."

My recent blog "An Alternative to Digitally Photographing Your Painting" has been reproduced as an article in a recent "Empty Easel" blog (this blog is well worth following for any serious artist). In addition my blog has generated some comments with questions that may be of general interest.

Elandria of ELANDRIA Oil Paintings, and Heather Assaf, both asked similar questions:

"What scanner are you using?"

I have a Microtek ScanMaker i900. I purchased this scanner to scan 35 mm slides and 4x5 transparencies. It has the ability to scan at 4800 dpi.

For scanning my paintings only use 400 dpi, so a lower quality (and lower price scanner would be OK.

I use Vuscan software to control the actual scanning. There are plenty of other scanning software available, including software that came with the scanner.

I have used Vuscan for years and I find their latest version is very good and easy to use.



"Does this mean you put the painting on the glass-plate?"

Yes.

As a result I often get highlights that occasionally occur where the paint bumps touch the glass.

I usually clean up the resulting image (after the merge step) to get rid of the highlights, using Photoshop Elements. To do the cleanup I work at very high magnification – so that I almost see the individual pixels. For most of the cleanup I use the Photoshop Stamping tool. Very occasionally I have to use the blur tool as well.



"I understand that overlapping part and that you need more than 1 scan for bigger paintings."

Adobe suggests more than 25% overlap.



Hope that answers some of the outstanding issues, and that you all have great success.

This is a great new painting.

New photographic prints have just been picked up after processing. Two friends, young Latino women, are anxious to see how they turned out. They sit on a low wall near a park and on the way home.

After quickly opening the envelope they scan each print and compare their feelings. Maybe they are photos of the new baby, or a boy friend, or last weekend's party. All are important memories to be shared and relived.

This painting was based upon photographs I took while painting near the central square of the colonial town of Patzcuaro, Mexico.

I think there is a lot of feeling in this painting "Sharing Memories." It is a situation that many of us have experianced, either as a participant, or by watching someone we know. I am very happy with how it turned out.