A Question Concerning Scanning Resolution (DPI)

[ArtisticMystic]

Hello. I scanned in my comic book pages into my PC and the Resolution was set to 150 DPI. When I later looked it up on EHow.com an article read that if one intends to print their comic out in the future the Resolution must be set to 300 DPI.

I already scanned in 48 pages of my comic and colored and lettered 24 pages of it with photoshop...Am I now going to have to re-scan all those pages all over again, re-color and re-letter the 24 pages that took me a month to do???

Please help...Your knowledge and experience are appreciated...

[Meister]

If you want those pages to look as good as they possibly can that's exactly what you're going to have to do. Usually when you scan materials, you scan at the highest possible resolution that your equipment can handle. Upscaling the resolution is possible but your material likely won't ever look as good as if you'd scanned it at a higher resolution in the first place, whereas you can always downscale from a high-res scan. I'd strongly advise you to rescan your stuff.

However, you might not have to do everything all over again. If you still have the .psd files with colours and lettering and everything in separate layers, you might be able to reuse those layers for a newly scanned page with only minor adaptations; if they're saved as vectors this should be no problem at all. Some of the more artistically inclined members will know more about that, I'm sure.

Do you want to print these only for yourself or get them printed professionally at some point?

[CelesJessa]

No, if I'm not mistaken, printing-quality images need to be 300 ppi not DPI. And I think that 150 dpi is about 300 ppi so you should be good.
Edit: Looked it up!

And if not, some TL;DR about changing resolution in photoshop:

You can change the resolution from 150 to 300 with Photoshop. Ideally, to make sure there's no loss, you need to uncheck the "resample image" button when you're in the image>image size box (which is what you would use to change the ppi). This will change your image to be the 300 ppi without losing data/making it blurry/pixelated HOWEVER it makes your image smaller.

For example, I made a picture that was 3.3 inches by 3.3 inches at 150 ppi. I changed it to 300 ppi and unchecked the resample image button. My image was virtually unchanged except now, if I were to print it, it would be 1.6 inches by 1.6 inches.

Visualization!

So you're good to change the resolution if the final image size is what you want.

[ArtisticMystic]

Thanks to Meister and CelesJessa for you input. This is what I love about the artistic community, the willingness to help one another.

@Meister: Do you want to print these only for yourself or get them printed professionally at some point?

I'd love to first finish my comic as a 99 page short story, then post it as a webcomic and get it into professional print and published by a mainstream comic company...I have a webcomic up already (NightWorld), but it's not the one I'm working on right now. I'm just now starting to learn about the business side to comics, publishing, distribution etc...So I've got some learning to do...D:

First, I guess I'm going to have to print out around 100 copies from my local printing shop for promotion... http://www.ehow.com/how_2143050_self...omic-book.html

[ArtisticMystic]

I just tried a scanning experiment and re-scanned one of my comic pages with the resolution setting to 300 DPI and I must say, that when I zoomed in, (in photoshop) it was way more clear than at 150 DPI (which pixelated when I zoomed in)

My resolution goes up to 1600 DPI in custom settings. 300 DPI took a bit longer to scan than 150 DPI, but 1600 DPI takes a VERY long time to scan...

I'm assuming I'm safe with 300 DPI?

[Meister]

300 should do you fine, yeah. 1600 strikes me as way overdoing it. You might want to ask a professional printer, though (or just look stuff up in the library). just so you don't end up making some irreversible obscure mistake that renders all your stuff unfit for professional printing.

(PS just in case don't post the 300 dpi images as a webcomic, make a downscaled 72 dpi version for that.)

[ArtisticMystic]

Meister: PS just in case don't post the 300 dpi images as a webcomic, make a downscaled 72 dpi version for that.

Are you saying that I should do a downscaled 72 dpi version for a webcomic in case someone tries to print my work without permission and they'll get a heavily pixelated version instead?

[Meister]

Nothing like that, 72 dpi is simply the usual resolution of monitors. 300 dpi images would take terribly long to load and get displayed far too large.

(by the way: http://nuklearforums.com/misc.php?do=bbcode#quote Makes quotes easier to read. )

[ArtisticMystic]

Originally Posted by Meister

Nothing like that, 72 dpi is simply the usual resolution of monitors. 300 dpi images would take terribly long to load and get displayed far too large.

(by the way: http://nuklearforums.com/misc.php?do=bbcode#quote Makes quotes easier to read. )

Ah yes, thanks for the tip...