When it comes to printing your artwork it is extremely important to start out with a high resolution digital image of the best quality possible.
As we have mentioned before, this can be achieved by scanning or by taking a digital photograph. For many artists nowadays, photographing their work themselves has become an attractive option for several reasons. Firstly, they may well already have a good quality digital camera and maybe an interest in photography; secondly it makes sense to produce their own images as it will represent at least some cost saving in the printing process.
However, it can be both a blessing and a curse for various reasons too, because taking a good photograph, like many things in life, does require some practice and a basic understanding of digital photography. Once mastered however, it can be very rewarding and learning to photograph your art will hopefully lead to greater and understanding of your equipment and the principles of photography and, in turn, perhaps give you another artistic outlet as well as a lot of enjoyment from taking better photographs on of all kinds of different subjects.
Image By Effie Yang
This is just a brief outline of what you will need to know and understand in order to produce a digital image of sufficiently high standard for a printer to be able to produce a reproduction of good quality which is, after all, what you want as an artist.
In terms of equipment you are going to need a DSLR camera and currently these are available from a few hundred dollars all the way up to several thousands. You won’t need to buy at the high end however, most modern entry level DSLR’s from the big names like Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Sony etc. are usually perfectly sufficient due to modern technology and the fairly high resolutions (megapixels) at which they can capture images. Ideally you should also have a suitable tripod to ensure a nice steady camera when photographing your paintings.
If you are new to digital photography, there will be a lot to learn. Most modern cameras can be used on fully automatic settings just like a point and shoot digital camera but when taking pictures of your art, you really will need to understand a little more about some of the settings and options if you are going to get the best results.
There are thousands of books on the subject of digital photography, many available online in digital format as well as physical publications, but a good place to start is often the manual that is provided with the camera itself as these usually contain not only instructions but often some useful basic photography tips.
You can download a short free report on how to shoot quality digital pictures from the website “Learn Digital Photography Now”
When shooting your artwork lighting is vitally important. Natural light can be quite sufficient but wherever you take your photographs it is important to ensure that there is no glare from lighting or the sun reflecting off of the surface as this will ruin your results. Pay equally careful attention to shadows. You will also need to consider things like white balance, and of course focus, although if you are shooting in RAW format (explained below) white balance is far less of an issue and preferably you should shoot in RAW format – different cameras have different capabilities, so you need to understand what you want and how to make your camera behave accordingly. If you shoot RAW, most of your camera’s settings will be ignored as they are used to process images in the camera itself, but the resulting files are far better suited to post processing with software.
Shooting in RAW produces much larger file sizes and preserves far greater detail in each image. There is no in-camera processing and this makes for far greater and easier editing abilities in post processing. For printing purposes, RAW files are therefore much easier to work with and as they are uncompressed there is no loss of image quality. You may find that you will be unable to view the resulting images on your PC as it requires specific image editing software. Most camera manufacturers include their own versions in their camera software although the features can vary greatly . If you have a camera capable of taking RAW/JPEG together, you may prefer this, but remember that the files will probably look different in terms of colour etc due to the camera’s settings for JPEGs.
(Note that RAW files do not have a .RAW extension – the file type will depend entirely on the manufacturer in question).
Additionally, make sure that you are taking the photo at 90 degrees to the flat surface of your painting – if it is tilting away from or towards the camera, it will make cropping the final image much more difficult and you may end up losing significant areas of the painting. Of course, the image needs to be horizontal as well, with no sloping right or left. Try to fill the frame as much as possible with the painting itself – the background is of no interest as far as printing goes and the larger the image of the work, the better but do leave at least a little space around the painting for accurate adjustments and cropping.
These are very basic guidelines but if you follow them you should end up with a very acceptable basis from which to print your work. If you ask a professional to do it for you it is going to cost you every time, so the investment in a DSLR for a few hundred dollars will pay for itself in fairly short order if you are intending to make prints of your art on a fairly regular basis.
Possibly Related Posts:
- National Gallery Of The Cayman Islands Exclusive Poster Prints
- Fine Art Prints – Tips For Artists
- Artists Photographers & Copyright In The Digital Age