Yesterday I learned a technique or two I’m hoping will streamline how I post my sketchbook photos.
Previously I scanned my pages and loved its bright, clear look… but my scanner has since stopped communicating with my laptop. The last time that happened I lost nearly a week of my life on the phone with tech support. I have no desire to experience that again. Over the years I’ve also found myself relying on my phone to handle more and more of my life. In fact, last October I started posting with the WordPress app for iPhone.
Since the scanner debacle I’ve only been posting photos of my work. They’ve been OK but I’ve had to do quite a bit of editing to get an acceptable image.
Enter Tina Koyama of Fueled by Clouds & Coffee. Tina did a test post in preparation for her July trip to Manchester, UK as an Urban Sketchers Symposium correspondent. She’s testing various apps and methods for uploading photos and images of sketches to the urban sketchers blog. Her June 7, 2016 post, Green Lake Intersection (Test) prompted me to ask why she preferred to use a scanning app, in particular Cam Scanner. (available for both Android and iOS)
Based on her images I downloaded CamScanner and gave it a whirl. Fantastic! It saves me multiple steps as it brightens, straightens, and crops with just one click.
See for yourself… the image was done with carbon black ink and watercolor on Strathmore 500 Mixed Media paper.
Natural evening light… dusk, approximately 8 PM.
Same, with Cam Scanner.
Indoor LED desk lamp. 8 PM.
Same, with Cam Scanner.
Natural morning diffused light, west window.
Same but with Cam Scanner.
The mid-body yellow was burned out in both of the other attempts but the Cam Scanner image from yesterday morning shows the yellow glow and came the closest to the true image in my sketchbook.
One more thing. The majority of this post was dictated! Yeah, I felt funny talking to my phone but it worked surprisingly well. I need to brush up on the commands, like what to say to get the program to capitalize, but I think I’ll be dictating more and more.
You CAN teach an old dog new tricks!
Dana Burrell... Art 
My son talks into his phone and I have noticed, if he wants to say “it is”, it show’s up as “it’s”. Then I have to decode it!
Love the expression, teaching an old dog new tricks!
Isn’t that odd… the phone thinks he should use the contraction… does it think it knows better?!?
I’m going to give that app a try! Thanks for the research!
I still love the Cam Scanner app but I’ve taken to mostly using the “Lighten” setting unless the tone/tint is off. Hope you like it Anne.
Thinking it’ll be good for pieces that I don’t want to lay on the scanner (crayon, pastel). Enid’s journal wouldn’t scan well, though I already took photos of the entire thing (which I still need to edit).
It would be perfect for that Anne. You can also run photos from your camera roll through the app to see if it improves the lighting. You can rotate and crop easily too.
I just used it for some recipes and it worked great! Oh lightbulb moment — then I could have my favorite recipes stored on my phone!