Natural World Production Specs
Scanning
Each page is scanned twice.
Scan at 800 dpi color for the artwork.
Scan at 800 dpi bitmap for the text. (I don’t know if I have done this in the past, but do this before applying the watercolor shading, so it’s an option to use the line work in the future.) Scan line artwork @ 800 dpi grayscale. (Then apply threshold filter in Photoshop)
Drop bitmap text on top of original text as scanned with the original artwork. Then erase the text in the original artwork layer. This ensures that the text is black and solid, and not gray. [1]
I don’t know if this makes a difference when it’s printed professionally, but it doesn't make a difference when the comic is printed out on a laserjet/photocopier.
However, scanning at 1600 dpi for NW2 isn't really an option because it takes for-ever. With Natural World 2, the text was scanned as a bitmap at 800 dpi and dropped in place of the text in the color scan.
PDF containing samples of the two text treatments side-by-side: text-test.pdf
Photoshop
Applying threshold filter
With line artwork scanned as grayscale, a threshold filter is applied with a value of 178.
Processing page artwork for print
- Each page document is the size of the final page. (5.5 x 8.5″ @ 1000 dpi).
- Color correction is applied with curves and saturation adjustment layers.
- Artwork is centered on the page with guides.
Notes
- ↑ With Papercutter, I scanned the text as a bitmap at double the resolution. Then in Photoshop, converted it to grayscale and scaled it down 50% in order to get some anti-aliasing on the text.