Getting Artwork - Scanning Question

[Nuttman]

I'm hoping someone out there can answer this for me.  I haven't seen a thread for this here:

There's plenty of information out there on converting bitmap images into vector images (thanks to this group right here).  But how do you get the original art into the bitmap image for vectorization?  I'm talking about side art, marquees, control panels, bezels, etc.?  The art is substantially bigger than your typical flatbed scanner.  Also, control panels are usually not flat, but have angles and curves.  So how is this done?  

With the proliferation of digital cameras, I'm sure this is an option, but I would imagine you could lose some of the detail or possibly see some scaling issues or errors if the picture is taken on an angle.

Can anyone provide some insight into getting this cabinet art into the computer, or can you share any first-hand experience you might have with doing it?

Thanks!

 

[Stingray]

For side art you'll want to take some good high res digital pictures. You are correct in that they need to be taken straight on and not at an angle. Remember that the picture doesnt't have to be the same size as the original. After it has been "vecorized" it can be scaled up with no quality loss.

-S

[BobbyG66]

For side art you'll want to take some good high res digital pictures. You are correct in that they need to be taken straight on and not at an angle. Remember that the picture doesnt't have to be the same size as the original. After it has been "vecorized" it can be scaled up with no quality loss.

-S

Exactly, once you have the image, just cut and paste.
You do not have to modify the BMP file in Illustrator.
Just start tracing. If the image is only 2" x 4" don't worry, you can then make it 20' x 40' and it will be the same image. The only thing that will be different are the stroke lines around each item. You can change those later if needed.

Good luck

[Stingray]

You can actually set Illustrator to scale the width of the stroke lines too.

-S

[Nuttman]

For side art you'll want to take some good high res digital pictures.
-S

So to get the most detail, would you take several close-up shots for something big like side art?  Would you then use Photoshop or a similar application to combine these multiple pics into one piece and use that as the base picture to convert to vectors?

[Stingray]

If I were going to do it myself I'd take one shot of the entire side art with  the camera set to the highest res it can produce I'd use that one to do the tracing. Then I would take lots of good close up pictures of the areas that have a lot of detail just to use as reference.

Do you have a particular side art in mind? If so I might be able to be more specific on how I'd take the pictures.

-S

[Nuttman]

Do you have a particular side art in mind?
-S

I don't have a particular side art example at this time.  I just find the artwork portion of this hobby extremely fascinating.  It also gave me a good reason to pick up and learn Illustrator.  I'm just interested in the whole process from start (get cabinet artwork) to finish (convert to vector and share with community).

This will also give me a reason to use my digital camera and take pictures of cabinets I come across.  So when the wife asks me what the heck I'm doing besides embarrassing her, I can tell her I'm preserving history.  

[Nannuu]

Also being that it is vector you can create all of the individual pieces/characters seperately from your close up photos then combine and scale them all using the full sideart pic.

[patrickl]

I took pictures of the sideart of a Ms Pacman / Galaga class of 81 cab. I have to say one picture of the whole thing wasn't enough detail for me. But then I have a measly 3M pixel camera. I took 4 overlapping pictures and stitched it all together (actually I have 4 base images in CorelDraw).

Keep in mind that a 3M pixel camera is in fact maybe 2M camera (or maybe even just 1M). The "pixels" in the CCD element are in fact just pixels of 1 base color (of which there are 4 for a full "screenpixel", usually 2 green, one blue and one red). That's why when you zoom in to a digicam picture to "actual pixels" the picture always looks blurred. They cheat and create the color of each "pixel" by taking adding the colors of the surrounding pixels. But then you just reuse information.

I used PaintShop pro 8 to straighten out the pictures. If you can, try to make sure you get some horizontal and vertical lines around the image (and maye in the area's that you are cutting). That will make the straightening out the pictures a lot easier.

Most camera's will suffer from some pincushion or barrel problems (depending on the zoom level). Paintshop pro can also correct this. Again getting horizontal and vertial lines will help detect this problem and in correcting it.

Adobe Photshop 7 will do some straightening and perhaps even lens corrections, but I found it much more cumbersome.  Maybe Pohtoshop CS is better. With paintshop pro you select the corners of the image and it corrects it back to adjust out the perspective. With Photoshop you have to drag the perspective out (in fact photoshop is made to ADD perspective rather than take it out)

What also helps is if you can find a picture of the artwork on a site like twobits.com. They often have the artwork in perfect alignment. I blow up that image and place the pictures I have taken, onto this base image to make sure they are aligned just right. I use a tranparent layer to overlay my pictures on the base image and fiddle with them until they align.

It also helps to take some detail pictures of really complex areas, even if just to make sure how things should look.

Another thing is to bring a color chart to check the colors. It's pretty hard to get accurate colors back from digital pictures.

BTW, for tracing I find CorelDraw a lot easier to use than Illustrator, but that's just me perhaps. I hate the lack of context menu's in Illustrator. Corel has a line draw view where you just see the centerlines of the strokes and no filles, but it show the bitmaps. This view is excellent for finely adjusting lines. I also like to just place a lot of dots along a line and then let Corel smooth them out and autoreduce the number of points.

[Stingray]

What also helps is if you can find a picture of the artwork on a site like twobits.com. They often have the artwork in perfect alignment. I blow up that image and place the pictures I have taken, onto this base image to make sure they are aligned just right. I use a tranparent layer to overlay my pictures on the base image and fiddle with them until they align.

Excellent idea.

-S

[Nuttman]

This is all great information!  I have a much clearer picture (pun intended) of the process for getting artwork now.

Thanks to all.