Watercolor Paper Doll: Editing and Adding Tabs

The hard part of my little watercolor paper doll is done! Painting it took ages! Or at least it felt like it took ages. Today I'll try to wrap up this tutorial series with editing the scans and adding tabs.

Before I jump into editing, let's talk about scanners. The scanner you use and the way you set it up makes a difference. Right now, I have two scanners: one is part of my Epson ET-8500 and one is an Epson Perfection V600. I'm very happy with the Epson printer but it's not great as a scanner. The V600 scanner was something that just landed at my house (a friend was getting rid of it) and it's great! 

 Here's a washed out scan from my ET-8500. Not great.

 

Here's another attempt with the same scanner. I tried the blue paper trick and it still didn't help! 

Not only are those two scans weak, washed out, and sad, they are also only 300dpi. I like working at 600dpi for hand-drawn art because I can manipulate it, reduce the size, and it looks great.

This scan is from the V600 and it is significantly better! It's a bit of trial and error to find a scanner that works the best for your art. I would recommend getting a stand-alone scanner if you can. Multi-function devices are not always great. I'm editing the last scan because it's the closest to my actual art.

Once I'm happy with the scan, I extract the clothing from the background. There are a few different ways to do this. You could use the pen tool and created selections around each piece. I prefer using a mask and stylus to paint it away. 

I have a 24 inch display with a stylus. When I'm editing art in Photoshop, it's significantly larger than actual size. I can really get in there and fuss over every tiny detail. 

In the Layers menu, I have the original scan, a white layer with a pink color applied, and then a duplicate layer with a mask applied.

Here's the image with large areas masked off. This took me just a couple of minutes. I use the default hard round brush set to black to mask the image. Masking is non-destructive so if I slip or cover something I didn't mean to, I can switch to white and draw over it to bring it back. Once I rough in the mask, I zoom in nice and close and just draw away the white around the outfits.

After all of the mask is painted on, I apply the layer mask. This final step erases the areas I painted black and leaves me with a transparent background. Now I can easily select each outfit and put it on its own layer. That way I can manipulate it with the warp tool, check the fit, and add tabs.

I find that my tracing almost always creates an imperfect fit. And that's true of a lot of traditional artists. Sometimes the fit is just a little bit off and needs some work. First, I set my outfit layer Multiply so that I can see the doll through it. Next, go to Edit, Transform, then Warp. What you get is a grid system with nodes. In the picture above, I'm working with the 5x5 grid layout. To adjust the image, grab a node and move it where you want it to go. It's really just pulling and tugging on the image to correct slight misalignment. This is also the reason why I like to work at 600dpi - using the warp tool can sometimes create blurring or distortion. If I use warp, then shrink the image back down to 300dpi, it's sharper.

Now I add tabs. I use a mix of triangle and rectangle tab vector shapes depending on the section that needs a tab. Triangle tabs go in narrow or hard-to-cut spots. Rectangles for just about everything else. I like to put my tabs in a folder, then put the outfit and tabs in its own named folder. You can see the structure of my layers in the image above. 

I use the warp tool and add tabs to every outfit. I got a bit lucky with this one - the fit was pretty good overall. Often I'll layer individual pieces and adjust them to fit over each other correctly. I didn't do much in the way of editing or color corrected. I just corrected the fit.

And here's a layout of the doll! I left the base a little rough but I might go back and fix it. It's a cute little set. I don't think I'll go back to traditional media for everything. It feels like a ton of work!! At this point, I couldn't imagine create a whole book in watercolor...  It is nice, however, to get my hands dirty and get my brain to think a little bit differently.  Some of this was more technical then I intended and hopefully it helps.  Maybe I should take this doll and create a completely digital set, too, to see the differences. Let me know what you think!