Dad speaks: Devya's artwork is usually on any paper that she can lay her hands on. But her creative juices flow the best with Dad's printer paper. So far so good. But Devya also likes to draw on both sides. And that doesn't go very well with printer papers. They blot and now we have blemished artwork on each side.
Sometimes, when we do not get hold of the artwork on time for a scan, they might even be in a crumpled state or part of some craft. With her toddler brother around, the damage is multifold.
I am no digital artist or an expert with tools. I have used GIMP in the past for editing images, but my skills are limited to cropping, resizing, and rotating. I went through various videos on YouTube and came up with the following process.
I scan the sheets with 400 dpi so that I can capture the best quality possible.
I then use GIMP for the corrections. First I adjust the color levels. This takes out the greyish tint from the scan and makes the image appear closer to the original.
The folds or crumples leave grey shades all over the image. I use the color selector tool to select colors similar to white, which usually picks up the majority of the greys as well. Then I use the paintbrush tool to color the selected parts white. This works fine, as long as there is no grey in the original image.
Then I go through the image to manually take out any grey that is left out. Again, the free-select tool helps to select these areas and paint them white.
If the original was too crumpled, then I zoom in on the image and slowly take out all the greys manually. This is the toughest part. I usually don't go near the colored areas, as removing crumples in there might take away the aesthetics of the original.
Removing the blot from the other side is easy when it is not on the main image. But if it on the main image, then I use the heal tool to touch up the blotted regions. I use this with discretion. If the healing appears obvious, then I undo those areas.
Once the image is corrected, I export it to a PNG file. I am still figuring out the right metadata to put in an image. The next step is to upload it to the site and Opensea.
Publishing this draft from JUNE 2021 :)
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