Gray areas of paper drawings are showing Topic is solved

[BruceM]

I have a walk cycle that I did on paper and scanned into TVP. It's a high-con walk cycle of a pure black character on a white background. I used the Basic Scan Clean function to "clear" the drawings.
The issue that I have is that the drawings are showing gray in relation to the pure white area of the project window surrounding the drawings.
Is there a way to turn the gray area of the drawings to a pure white to match the project window white?

[Paul Fierlinger]

Try Color Replacer in the FX stack. It's a very simple and instinctive gadget under "color" in the search menu.

[D.T. Nethery]

I have a walk cycle that I did on paper and scanned into TVP. It's a high-con walk cycle of a pure black character on a white background. I used the Basic Scan Clean function to "clear" the drawings.
The issue that I have is that the drawings are showing gray in relation to the pure white area of the project window surrounding the drawings.
Is there a way to turn the gray area of the drawings to a pure white to match the project window white?

What Paul said to fix it after you've already run the scan cleaner (or you could use Curves > Alpha) , but also , when you first import the scanned drawings , open the FX Stack and choose Multiple FX > Histogram > Scan Cleaner Black & White . First adjust the Histogram levels to take out the grey of the paper , then adjust the Scan Cleaner curve until the drawings are optimized. Then select all and apply the FX . Histogram combined with Scan Cleaner can easily remove any grey .

[BruceM]

DT, I'm going into the Histogram and moving the little needles to adjust the white levels, but it doesn't appear to be affecting the image in any way. I'm clearly doing something wrong.
That said, I thought that it might make sense to first show you a frame of my animation to see if this is indeed the best process for this particular issue. I would like to make everything around the bear pure white.

[slowtiger]

The Histogram, like many FX, only works with RGB values, not with alpha, so applying it after the Scan Cleaner doesn't work. You need to test it with one of your original scans where the white and grey areas are still opaque. (It's the same in Photoshop.)

Your workflow should be:
1. scan
2. Histogram (make all grey areas white)
3. Scan Cleaner.

[BruceM]

Ah! Got it!
Thanks Slowtiger! I'll give that a shot...

[Svengali]

Another FX option - Color>Curves... Square the alpha curve at any percentage to get perfect white/black edge.

Color-Curves.png (51.84 KiB) Viewed 24013 times

[D.T. Nethery]

DT, I'm going into the Histogram and moving the little needles to adjust the white levels, but it doesn't appear to be affecting the image in any way. I'm clearly doing something wrong.
That said, I thought that it might make sense to first show you a frame of my animation to see if this is indeed the best process for this particular issue. I would like to make everything around the bear pure white.
Screen Shot 2018-08-28 at 10.37.34 AM.png

It is what Slowtiger mentioned : the Histogram FX needs to be applied BEFORE the Scan Cleaner FX . OR as Svengali suggested, use Color > Curves > Alpha to adjust layers that have already had Scan Cleaner applied.

See attached screen capture movie.

[BruceM]

Thank you so much DT! That worked beautifully on the already Scan Cleaned frames.
Very helpful for a numbskull like me to have the video to follow!

[Peter Wassink]

just curious, didn't the scan cleaner" transparency profile" do the job?

or was your question, how to fix already cleaned frames?

tvp-scancleaner.png (45.33 KiB) Viewed 23980 times

[BruceM]

Peter,

The project I was testing this stuff out on had scans that were already cleaned, so yes, I was wanting to know how to affect already clean drawings.
But then I also wanted to see how the method that DT (and you) have described might work.
I chose Multiple FX and then Histogram, but it didn't seem to be affecting the gray of the paper at all. This morning however, after reading your message, I went back in with un-cleaned drawings and tried again, but skipped the Histogram and went straight to the Black & White Scan Cleaner, and it worked great!

Thank you for your help, Peter! And thank you Paul, DT, Slowtiger, and Svengali for your help as well!

[D.T. Nethery]

Peter,

The project I was testing this stuff out on had scans that were already cleaned, so yes, I was wanting to know how to affect already clean drawings.
But then I also wanted to see how the method that DT (and you) have described might work.
I chose Multiple FX and then Histogram, but it didn't seem to be affecting the gray of the paper at all. This morning however, after reading your message, I went back in with un-cleaned drawings and tried again, but skipped the Histogram and went straight to the Black & White Scan Cleaner, and it worked great!

Thank you for your help, Peter! And thank you Paul, DT, Slowtiger, and Svengali for your help as well!

It's true, most of the time the B & W Scan Cleaner alone , using the Transparency Profile to make adjustments , will do the trick.
I've found with some scanned images if there are some especially heavy areas of "grey haze" on the scans , it can help to use Histogram in combination with Scan Cleaner.
(choose Add FX > Multiple FX , then Histogram , make the adjustment, then add Scan Cleaner on top of that , then Apply FX Stack) .

The other thing with the Curves FX was to adjust drawings that had already been Scan Cleaned. (but you know that now ; sorry if I wasn't clear about the order of things when I first posted my response) . Glad it all worked out.

Here's another tip if you're working with scanned drawings: Sometimes you may get a set of scans where there is a much heavier amount of grey around the edges of the paper , but not so much in the middle part of the paper where the drawing is ... so if you try to adjust Histogram and/or Scan Cleaner so that the white of the paper is perfectly even and white from edge to edge you may wash out the drawing in the middle , so I find it is best to first register the peg holes so that all drawings are in tight registration (if the drawings were scanned off-pegs through an ADF scanner) then I use the selection tool to select the heavy grey areas around the edges (being careful to make sure that none of the animation drawings are within the selection area) , then hit Delete to take out the selected area ... then I only have to make the Scan Cleaner adjustments to the drawing , so I'm not trying to balance the settings between the heavy shadow areas around the edges and the lighter grey area around the drawing , which keeps the drawing from getting too light and blown out.

[BruceM]

That's a great tip D.T.. Thank you!
I'm going to try that out now in hopes that it'll help me remember it.

[BruceM]

That last tip works beautifully!
Yesterday as a test, after using the Black & White Scan Cleaner, I used the color picker to match the white area and was going through frame by frame coloring over the really dark areas where my hand numbering and the black peg hole registration tape images were. This method saves oodles of time!

Thanks again D.T.!