roguewave Posted December 10, 2012 Share #1 Posted December 10, 2012 Advertisement (gone after registration) My wife is a watercolorist and I have tried for several years to find a solution for scanning her art work. Her small & medium size pieces are done on Strathmore 400 series Coldpress. Here's my central problem: the Paper has a light yellow tint & when I scan, it defaults to white background. I have tried various ways to adjust the scanner, I use a Epson V700. The scans are amazing, but I don't seem to be able get the exact colors by using the RGB color adjusters. I usually use the Scanner's "Built-in color space and "Adobe RGB" as the Printer color space. Any help would be very much appreciated. ALSO: does anyone know if you can "save" an adjustment as a file or preset that loads? Thanks for any help. Ben Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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erl Posted December 10, 2012 Share #2 Posted December 10, 2012 (edited) Ben, I have that scanner as well. I use VueScan software and move the black and white points to the full width of the histogram in Preview. Set the brightness on the Color tab to point where you just get tone in the paper base. Scan this setting, which will give a flat file. Open PS and now adjust the levels to best suit your needs. This should now permit you to correct the colour of the paper base and therefore the artwork. I hope this may be of some help. Good luck. I have had fairly good results doing similar work using this technique. Edited December 10, 2012 by erl Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
stuny Posted December 10, 2012 Share #3 Posted December 10, 2012 If that fails, perhaps master scanner, member John Mead can advise you. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Allsopp Posted December 10, 2012 Share #4 Posted December 10, 2012 I have no experience of this type of scanning Ben but when I am worried about white balance in photography I include white card in the shot and then colour correct in Lightroom using that. Applying the same principle get your wife to paint pure white on a sheet of her paper and colour correct in Lightroom. You can then use those settings to correct every subsequent scan. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted December 10, 2012 Share #5 Posted December 10, 2012 Isn't it simpler to make a setup to photograph her works? Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
01af Posted December 10, 2012 Share #6 Posted December 10, 2012 Isn't it simpler to make a setup to photograph her works? That's what I'd suggest, too. But then ... I remember having read an article years ago about someone who tried exactly that—to photograph his wife's paintings—and consistently failed to reproduce the colours accurately, no matter whether he tried under tungsten light or daylight. It was not just a matter of white balance. The colours were seriously distorted—some were correct and others were wrong, and when correcting for the wrong colours then the correct ones became wrong. After a lot of grief and hair-pulling, it turned out that infra-red contamination was the culprit. He got an IR-cutting filter, and his copy work went flawlessly from then on. And no, he did not use a Leica M8 but an ordinary mid-level DSLR camera. So, the colours used for artwork painting can have a wide variety of infra-red reflectances. Using an IR-cutting filter might be a good idea even when the camera has no IR issues otherwise. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
erl Posted December 10, 2012 Share #7 Posted December 10, 2012 Advertisement (gone after registration) Isn't it simpler to make a setup to photograph her works? Definitely not simpler, BUT it is a very good 'fallback' option if the above ideas fail. Arranging even lighting, parallel support between work and film plane etc all take time and effort. Ultimately, the result is often better to some degree, but is a lot more work and easily got wrong. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
roguewave Posted December 10, 2012 Author Share #8 Posted December 10, 2012 Ben, I have that scanner as well. I use VueScan software and move the black and white points to the full width of the histogram in Preview. Set the brightness on the Color tab to point where you just get tone in the paper base. Scan this setting, which will give a flat file. Open PS and now adjust the levels to best suit your needs. This should now permit you to correct the colour of the paper base and therefore the artwork. I hope this may be of some help. Good luck. I have had fairly good results doing similar work using this technique. Erl, the results of your method look very promising Jaap, that would be a nightmare scenario. Bill, that doesn't work the way one would think. I tried several variations of that. On some of the scans I did, it was very interesting. These scanners sort of have interesting proclivities. In fact, the colors that are from the watercolors are almost accurate, even though the paper is closer to white than the real light yellow. Somehow there must be an algorithm that adjusts these various competing renderings. Thanks for the help & if anyone else has any ideas, feel free to educate this old fool. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pop Posted December 10, 2012 Share #9 Posted December 10, 2012 Have you profiled your scanner? Several years ago I used to use some color management software which came with a reference scanning target for exactly this kind of problem. Or isn't that done any more? Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ceflynn Posted December 11, 2012 Share #10 Posted December 11, 2012 Scanner Profiling with IT8 Targets Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tobey bilek Posted December 11, 2012 Share #11 Posted December 11, 2012 You can save a setting as "name of your choice" in the box at the top. Type over what is there. Try adjusting the blue channel of RGB. Minimizing blue will color shift to yellow. There is a color balance square. All these options are in the professional or manual scan settings. The auto scan does not provide them and that mode is doing what it is supposed to do, make paper white easily. Another way is to make white paper white and save the settings. Then when you put cream base paper down, it scans as cream. Actually the software is very good, just instructions do not match. You can also put the file in photoshop, then add yellow tint. This is ok because the scanner shifted all the colors, not just yellow paper. IT 8 target is for scanning color transparencies, not flat art. A copy stand will also work. Two lights at 45 deg. Do a custom WB , then add the painting. Larger work can be done on a wall. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Furia Posted December 11, 2012 Share #12 Posted December 11, 2012 A solution would cover the art work with a white paper (larger than the art work) — do you will see the white edges surrounding the art work when scanning which will be your white point. Do not crop the white edges until the scanner find the white point. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
250swb Posted December 11, 2012 Share #13 Posted December 11, 2012 A solution would cover the art work with a white paper (larger than the art work) — do you will see the white edges surrounding the art work when scanning which will be your white point. Do not crop the white edges until the scanner find the white point. Good idea. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wda Posted December 11, 2012 Share #14 Posted December 11, 2012 Ben, this reads like a white balance problem and you might not have a known neutral tone in the artwork to neutralize the greys. Would it be possible to scan a calibrated grey card separately and then use that to neutralize the colour cast? Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
roguewave Posted December 11, 2012 Author Share #15 Posted December 11, 2012 Ben, this reads like a white balance problem and you might not have a known neutral tone in the artwork to neutralize the greys. Would it be possible to scan a calibrated grey card separately and then use that to neutralize the colour cast? David, you and several members have iterated many of the attempts I made to solve the problem. None of them solve ALL the issues. First of all watercolors on this Coldpress makes it very tricky. In essence what I have done is to scan for the watercolors, first & formost. I can use the RGB curves to make slight adjustments, keeping the most important colors as true as possible. ''I asked my wife to make a test watercolor on a "whiter" paper that is a variant of Coldpress. Very interesting results. The water colors are "almost" identical, but "cleaner" as it's on a white surface rather than the cream. They are not that far apart. I would guess that the Vuescan & the Epson some how find a "middle ground" and that is very acceptable. Where there is an obvious issue, I have just corrected the color with an adjustment layer & "painted in" the correct color. Nothing perfect. Thanks all for the help and great advice. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pico Posted December 12, 2012 Share #16 Posted December 12, 2012 Include a standard color chart in the photo, or photograph it separately at exactly the exposure and lighting you make of your wife's work. Then you can match the outcome in post processing. It is exactly the same work flow we have used in film photography for decades. It works. . Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
erl Posted December 12, 2012 Share #17 Posted December 12, 2012 Include a standard color chart in the photo, or photograph it separately at exactly the exposure and lighting you make of your wife's work. Then you can match the outcome in post processing. It is exactly the same work flow we have used in film photography for decades. It works.. Quite true Pico, exception Ben is scanning the original, not photographing it. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sblitz Posted December 13, 2012 Share #18 Posted December 13, 2012 Not sure if you are intent on doing this yourself or not. If not, I have sent several watercolors of mine to Duggal for them to scan and print on watercolor paper and it has come out great. Ithey do a few test runs of a smaller size to see if they have it right, and it usually takes a couple of turns. And then they give you the cd with the file so you can print yourself going forward. I last did about 3 years ago and I don't remember the price. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
roguewave Posted December 13, 2012 Author Share #19 Posted December 13, 2012 Not sure if you are intent on doing this yourself or not. If not, I have sent several watercolors of mine to Duggal for them to scan and print on watercolor paper and it has come out great. Ithey do a few test runs of a smaller size to see if they have it right, and it usually takes a couple of turns. And then they give you the cd with the file so you can print yourself going forward. I last did about 3 years ago and I don't remember the price. Steve, I have had work done there in the past. Honestly, they did ok, but nothing close to what I needed. I think I have found a workflow that comes very close to what my wife needs. I tried a variety of high end scanners that friends use for the same purpose. Each scan had it's strengths & weaknesses. In the end, I refined a scanning method that I use with film: I scan the watercolors with low contrast so as to make sure all the subtle gradations in color are still "available" and then process each part of the scan in an individual layer. This way I have each "original scan layer to deal with the problem colors and can make individual adjustments, as needed. Thanks all for your thoughts & suggestions. It is much appreciated. 3 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
williamgm Posted December 21, 2012 Share #20 Posted December 21, 2012 It's not correct to say that the IT8 colour target is only for transparency, flatbed targets are also made. The Vuescan pdf manual details colour profiling a scanner & also refers to reasonably priced IT8 targets available from Herr Wolf Faust in Frankfurt Affordable IT 8.7 (ISO 12641) Scanner Color Calibration Targets I actually received a flatbed target from Herr Faust this week for profiling an Epson A3 scanner using Vuescan. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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