i need an artists touch on this image for side art!

[tyweed]

I have this pic of venom i want to put on my side of the cabinet. I have a few problems i was hoping you art experts can help me with.

1. how can i get the image to about 22"x36" without it getting really pixalated and fuzzy. should i use photoshop or illistrator

2. it has black background which is great since my cab is black but what happens when i print it the blavcks are different. it won't be very smooth of a transition should i pull him out of background or something

[DinoRoger]

Thr image posted is only 28 DPI meaning any kind of resize is almost impossible unles you manually re-colored the image.  If you have a physical copy of the image or can find it I suggest scanning it at at least 300 DPI and try working with that.  If you got the system power go for 600 DPI.

[tyweed]

i don't have the image i found this online any way i can take this image and make it 300dpi

[DinoRoger]

No origianl needs to be better DPI quality.  I can make it 2400 DPI but now I have a crummpy looking huge 2400 DPI image. LOL  Its need to be scanned at a higer DPI for easy sizing later on.

[skirge66]

couldn't you use frosty's tut on illistrator in the download section ?

[mahuti]

Well, it's always nice to have a good scan to start with, but there are a FEW tricks that you can use to res-up pictures.

1. Start with a low-dpi image.
2. Run filter, gausian blur until you don't see to many artifacts (funny JPG type dots and weird colors) and you still have fairly crisp edges.
3. Up-res as desired.
4. Run filter, sharpen, unsharp mask... play with the settings until you bring more crispness back to the lines, without generating new artifacts, or bringing back the old ones.

That technique can really stretch a lot of images well past their realistic DPI.

If you would like to see an example of this technique, go to http://homepage.mac.com/mahuti/vpics.jpg Be warned, it's about 500 K image. The pic above was scaled up to 300 dpi at 22 x 36.

The top image shows with technique, bottom shows scaled up without. The top image is far from perfect, but is (in my opinion) superior to the one below. With a better initial scan, the more you can upres later. With ANY scan of a magazine, or other printed material, there is only so much you can scan before you start to see the stochastic printing dots, and you have to use this technique to remove those dots later.  

Soo.. 1. Answered above (sort of) it takes some experimentation to get acceptable results. You should use Photoshop. It's a raster-based image program... deals with DPI. Illustrator is for vector (line art) It has some use with images, but that is really Photoshop's forte.

2. a. pull it off of the background. b. put a non-black line around it (like an outline or a circle) c. print it on paper big enough to cover the whole cab.

personally, I'd add some extra art around it (2b) Plenty of arcade cabs you could use as reference.

[AceTKK]

couldn't you use frosty's tut on illistrator in the download section ?

It would be extremely difficult to re-draw that image in Illustrator.  I know it would be impossible for all but the most talented graphic artists.

-Ace-

[Frostillicus]

couldn't you use frosty's tut on illistrator in the download section ?

It would be extremely difficult to re-draw that image in Illustrator.  I know it would be impossible for all but the most talented graphic artists.

-Ace-

Heh Heh - sounds like a challenge    Not that I have any free time to do this, but look at it in terms of shapes - it's not that hard, people just need to get past the stigma of illustrator of only being able to handle solid blocks of colors.  Besides you can always bring a big version into photoshop and add the veins or whatnot by hand.

It would take some time, but so would re-painting the whole thing in photoshop, which is the ONLY way it would look acceptable.  mahuti mentioned the old standard way of resizing, but the results still look pretty bad to me.  Bottom line is there is no way to make a small pic look good at larger sizes.  I tell this to clients at least 2-3 times a day when they email me a crappy pic and want it on the cover of a proposal   It might not be too noticeable for small size changes, but I guarantee it will look pretty bad at sideart sizes.

My suggestion is to find a good solid print of spawn - not from a comic book, maybe from a graphic novel cover or something, and scan it in at an insane dpi and use that.  

[mahuti]

It could be drawn using the gradient mesh tool in Illustrator, but that would be just silly.  

[caykroyd]

Ha.  My wife would make me sleep out in the garage with the arcade if it had side art like that  

[shmokes]

I say find a different picture.  There's something strange about that picture that I don't like.  It looks like maybe Venom was out on a date at his local amusement park and decided it would be fun to go to one of those booths that superimpose your head on the body of a muscleman or a bikini chick.  He decided to have his black head superimposed on a purple-muscleman-body.  he also seems to have a three-foot long neck.

There are a lot of Venom pictures that are great and creepy without the weirdness so I say keep searching (and maybe you'll be able to find a higher res picture, too).