Expert: Tom Rouze - 8/24/2005

Question
Hi Tom,
I have a P4 2.4 ghz laptop running windows 98se. I would like to clean up some black and white graphics that I want to eventually put on t-shirts; they are now scanned into my computer. The drawings themselves are sometimes not as clean as I'd like them to be. Instead of spending a lot of time trying to clean them up with pen and ink (most are pen and ink and some are photocopied) I was hoping there was a software program that would do that automatically. I have Illustrator and Photoshop but have never used them. I also have Paint shop pro. Rather than spending lots of time reading manuals and digging, I was hoping somebody knowledgeable could get me started in the right direction. Will any of these programs do what I want to do? If so, please lead me a little. If not, please suggest other possibilities.
Thanks.
John Madison

Answer
Hi John,
Well I've only heard about Paint shop pro. So let's stick with Photoshop.  With that said, Photoshop is the answer.  There are a couple things that you need to know first.  
1. you must make sure that your scan is high enough resolution.  This is especially important if enlarging or reducing the size.
2. If your resolution is too high then you'll have files are unecessarily large.
3.  The first thing to do when you start working on the file is change the mode to grayscale. When you scan an image it scans in RGB so you capture all the colors and subtleties of the image.  Since your not printing in color you are converting the file to b/w by selecting the grayscale mode but retaining the details that the scanner captured in color.  Hope that makes sense!
There are settings on the scanners that will do this but I find it better to do change it in Photoshop.
Once you open the file in Photoshop you can clean it up a number of ways.  The least complex is using a tool to "erase" the unwanted areas and spots, etc...
Once you get to know the program a little more you can clean up the art with filters and by changing some parameters. If you want to email me a file as an example of what you want to do Then I'll put together more specific steps to help you clean up the art.  My email address is printspecialist2003@yahoo.com  
Thank you,

Tom