1. Introduction to Image Cleanup

Cleanup is the next logical step after an image has been scanned. Depending on many factors, as discussed in the scanning section, cleanup can be quick and simple or tedious and complex. Cleanup, as the name would imply, is the process of tidying up and removing unwanted elements from a scanned image, such as smudges, gray areas, eraser crumbs, digital noise, stray lines, etc. Besides removing unwanted junk, cleanup also focuses on getting the picture sharp, dark, transparent, and ready for coloring.

2. Brightness / Contrast

Brightness and contrast sliders are useful for cleanup on both pencil work lacking sharp dark lines and clarity, and inked line work where the scanned line art isn't quite black and the paper isn't quite white. If the scanned image in question already has crisp black lines, skip this section and move onto the Replace Color section.

Various levels of Brightness.

Brightness controls the amount of light and dark in an image. Increasing the brightness setting does an excellent job of eliminating unwanted light gray tones from an image, and bleaching the lighter tones. Avoid decreasing the brightness below 0. A negative brightness number will darken lines, but more significantly, it'll cause the white paper to grow increasingly gray, which is an undesirable effect.

Various levels of Contrast.

3. Replace Color

Reduction of grain and image noise can be easily done through the Replace Color option without negatively affecting the quality of the line art. Using Replace Color, lighter gray tones can be selected based on color value and then replaced with white, making cleanup a much easier task.

Replace Color is located under the Image menu on the Adjust submenu. Depending on the color mode your image is set at, the Replace Color interface slightly differs. If the scanned image was scanned and left in grayscale mode, the interface will resemble the picture on the right. If your image is set on color mode, the Replace Color interface will have some additional sliders, but will otherwise work the same.

About the interface.

The eyedropper tool contained within Replace Color is similar to the eyedropper tool on Photoshop's tool palette, which allows colors to be easily selected from within an image. The only difference is that the colors chosen with Replace Color's eyedropper tool will be replaced with a different color. For the purpose of cleanup, that color is white.

The Fuzziness Slider controls how tones similar to the selected color are influenced. To give an example, if an area of pure white was selected and the fuzziness setting was set at 0 then only white would be altered by the Replace Color command. Increasing the fuzziness slider slightly would cause the effects of the Replace Color command to spill over into other near white areas of the image. As the fuzziness slider setting is placed higher, more of the gray tones would be selected and altered in accordance with the Lightness setting, which is discussed briefly below.