Best Way To Capture Your Artwork?!?

Hi Chris, Im using a Nikon Coolpix With 20 million pixels,available on E bay for about 60$. It seems to work good for me. The cameras are re-furbished and just like new. Hope this helps ! The company is Cameta Camera.

I use an Epson V500 scanner and use Panavue Image Assembler software to stitch multiple scans together for the larger artwork. Panavue is not very smart software though, but it's free and work arounds to make it work aren't that difficult. I've tried using a camera in the past and have never been able to make it work, the scanner works great with only minor adjustments in the editor after, and you can also capture at a much higher resolution than you can with a camera which makes enlargements possible.

Here are some tips for you that we give people photographing their work. However, even if you scan, some will help

First off, all artwork should be photographed following these simple steps:

1. Use at least a 10-12 MP camera, with a manual focus lens not an auto focus. The higher the MP the camera, the larger the file we have to print from. If you want to offer large prints, you need to use a high MP camera.

2. Mount the camera to a tripod. If you don't have a tripod, use a stack of books, a table, anything. You just have to have the camera sitting on something, not hand held.

3. Shoot outdoors in natural light. Make sure you white balance your camera too, or the colors won't be right.

4. Preview the image to make sure there are no blurry areas, flash problems, etc.

5. Export at the highest possible file size while staying under our less than 25 MB limit.

To preview an image in photo editing software simply use the zoom icon to zoom in on the image until it's viewed at 100% print size. What you will find is that viewing it at 100% you will be able to see if there are any problem areas.

Look all around the image at 100%, the edges included. If the image has no problems, blurry areas, uncropped edges, or areas where there is flash reflecting off the image, then you're on your way to a great image.

Second, you have to determine how large you want your image printed to. Go to the image menu, and click "Resize Image". DO NOT RESIZE THE IMAGE TO BLOW IT UP LARGER IN THIS MENU. That will only result in a blurry, pixelated, problematic image.

We need 100 pixels/inch in order to have a nice image for printing. That makes the math easy as well. Your image menu can be viewed as a pixels/inch ratio, and you can see how many inches wide by tall your image is. You can shrink down the inches in this menu if the image is blurry. THis is shrinking the image to make it a little smaller. You can shrink the image down and it will help the quality of the image, just never blow it up in this menu.

If your image is 1400 pixels by 1000 pixels then the image can be printed up to 14x10. etc.etc.

That's all you need to preview your image. Doing that will help inform you how large your image can be printed to, and whether it's print ready when zooming in at 100% to see it's quality of focus and to see if there are any problem areas.

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Garbage in garbage out as they say. You can cheap it out or do it right in my opinion. Yes, I pay $120 per scan done on a Cruse scanner. I feel lucky to have it available.

Many may not agree with me on this but I'm trying to present my work in as professional a manner as possible. I think many, "Artists" shoot themselves in the foot by skimping on things. It is a business like any other.

Well, if you're selling your originals for thousands of dollars then you can justify that expense, but for me $120 is more than the price of many of my originals. Besides I get very good results with my method that costs nothing but a little time.

Abbie's post above is brilliant, but I would add that you need to find your sweet spot and hour(s) for your location. Generally, I shoot paintings (for my mom, who is a watercolor artist) between 9 and 10 am in central California. You can go a little earlier in the summer and a little later in the winter. At her house, it is the atrium, at my house it is the side yard.
These are two key factors.

I try to sneak up to it myself, when it's not looking.

Seriously, I like Abbies idea of shooting outside. If you can catch an overcast day even better I think.

You could also shoot the work in quadrants and stitch it back together for larger more detailed images. You'd have to be careful with alignment and have overlap. Hugin is free software that could be good for that.

I would suggest you photograph a number of originals at one setting....The set up takes all the time...The actual snapping is minimal.

Yes, HW is right - overcast is your friend and increases your window of opportunity.

I pay up to $200 for a professional scan and have never had a problem with the results.

The best way is a scanner back camera with a flat field lens using at least 2 light sources heavily diffused and set at an angle so that incident light is not reflected back to the lens. The work needs to be exactly square with the camera. The work then needs to be rotated and cropped perfectly and then corrected in an image editor, color corrected and adjusted for brightness and contrast. Very few artists have the equipment or skill to do it this way. That is why there are photo labs that specialize in it.

If you don't have the money to have it done like this, the second best thing to do is find a photographer with a good DSLR who has the experience and skills.

I find that most artists would not even know if their work is right or not. Many of the paintings uploaded by artists with little experience in photography are scanning is less than optimal and some will not be accepted for printing if sold. Common defects are crooked horizons, cropped off image and/or signature, bits of background showing, glare, over exposure, underexposure, poor focus, overall blurrinessor soft on the edges. Additionally there are sometimes artifacts from up-sizing or compression.

For the do it yourselfer there are advantages and drawbacks to both photographing and scanning. If you need specific help there are plenty who can do that. You have not even said what size your work is nor what method you have used. Your art is great but you have not done it justice yet and it might not print if sold. Usually scanning and stitching works well for watercolor and is relatively inexpensive.

Do not use a cheap point and shoot. That will just make it harder to get a good quality digital file. There are other things besides number of pixels. To Frederick I recommend putting some of your work up for critique for image quality.

In fact all painters who have not sold a few prints and are not experiences in photographing or scanning their art should get a critique done rather than waiting on a sale.

Top selling artists usually sell prints that far exceed the minimal standards used to determine if an image will print.

just wanted to say that as someone new, less than 2 months, I am learning an awful lot reading all of your comments here, and thanks!