Digitizing traditional art

[mekare]

Hey, I hope some of the graphics programme users here can help me. I have finished a big watercolour piece today and tried to scan it in two parts. Now my idea was to merge those two parts in a graphics programme. Has anyone ever done it successfully? I only own a freeware programme (GIMP) which is supposed to be similar to Photoshop and there was definite line separating the two scans. Any idea on how to get rid of it or a better method? I tried taking photos of the whole picture but they came out much darker than the scan (I adjusted brightness and contrast of the photo in that same programme but it's still not as light as the scan).

ETA: Thank you everyone for all the helpful tips. I'll definitely try the overlaying this weekend with an additional middle part scan. I knew I could count on you :-)

ETA2: I think I did it! I put two scans together and adjusted the brightness of the lighter one, scaled down the resolution somewhat and now the line is almost unnoticeable. Thank you all! Unfortunately I can't post the result yet, since it is a Bigbang piece, but I'll post a link when I'm allowed.

Comments

[ratcreature]

I have done this with GIMP for larger acrylics paintings several times (examples: here, here, here) and fairly successfully, though it is hard to get rid of a line entirely.

In my experience there is no special trick just tedious fiddling. And the main thing is to post at a screen resolution that is significantly lower than the scan resolution so that this will make the border less prominent.

The most important thing when scanning is to scan with a good overlap, because at the border of the scanner there will be distortion, especially if the paper is larger than the scanning surface. Then you align the two parts by overlaying the overlap with two layers, sometimes you need to rotate a fraction of a degree and such to make things line up, then make sure to get the best color match by fiddling with brightness an color curves if the colors that ought to be the same don't match in the overlap. Then I cut of the distorted parts, and then look which part looks better on top. You can try various overlay modes to merge, but I didn't have much luck with that. The main improvement really comes from viewing it smaller.

[mekare]

I am currently right in the middle of the tedious fiddling. Thanks for your advice!