A Guide for Preparing Print-Ready Artwork
Creating fine art can be tough because, unlike the computer, you don’t have an undo button. When you are finally done with your piece of art and are ready to print it, it can be rewarding, unless, of course, you notice a couple of things that you’d like to change. Once you are at this stage, you can’t exactly go back and change anything depending on the medium you may have used like ink or charcoal. What if you could upload your art into a program and adjust the fine details right before you print them? With BeFunky, you can!
If you’re preparing your art for print and have changes to make to your drawing or painting before you print it, you can upload it into BeFunky’s Photo Editor and clean up any errors before sending it off to make dozens of prints.
How to Prepare Artwork for Print
Preparing your artwork for print does not have to be daunting. With a few tools in Befunky’s Photo Editor, you can make the adjustments you need quickly and efficiently. After you do this, your artwork will be print-ready!
Step 1: Take a Photo and Upload It
First things first, you need to upload a high-resolution photo of your artwork. You can do this by scanning your artwork and uploading the file or by taking a photo of your artwork and uploading the picture. If you need some help learning how to photograph or scan your print, check out this article from Society6!
To upload your photo, simply select Open, and under New Image, choose Computer. Locate your file and upload it.
Step 2: Adjust the Exposure
The first thing I do before using any other tool is to adjust the Exposure, Contrast, and Color. To do this, select Edit from the left-hand menu.
Find and select Exposure. From here, you can edit the Brightness, Contrast, Highlights, and Shadows. This should be enough to balance the overall Exposure. If you need more control of this, try using the Levels tool to adjust your exposure.
Step 3: Use the Clone Tool
Once you fix your Exposure, select Touch Up from the left-hand menu. From here, you can access tons of tools that will help enhance your coloration. We are going to select the Clone tool so that we can make some adjustments to the painting itself. We want to remove the signature on this art piece.
To use this tool, hold down Control (PC)/Command (Mac) and select a point on your art piece. The first point that you select will begin to replace the second point that you select, so make sure that the first point you select is of a similar style and color. I generally choose a point near to what I want to replace. If you make a mistake before you apply your final clone edits, you can press Control+Z to undo them and retry!
The other trick here is to do many smaller clicks or taps of your mouse around what you want to replace This makes the tool work seamlessly and will allow the cloned section to blend into the area. I will generally select a few places to clone, and do many clicks on each cloned section to get the desired results.
Once you are finished, select Apply.
Step 4: Fix Coloration
The final step is to fix your coloration. The color may have been altered due to taking a photo of your art piece, or you may want to enhance specific areas now that you see it on a screen. To do this, you can use a tool like Color from the Edit panel, or to fine-tune coloration, select the Paint Brush tool in the Touch Up menu.
I like to set my Brush Hardness and Opacity to a low percentage to give the brush a feathered look. I then use the Eye Dropper Tool in the Color selection to choose a similar color from my artwork to work with. This tool acts as a paintbrush and allows you to paint over sections of your artwork, just like a real paintbrush.
Make sure that when using this tool, it is blended with your artwork. You don’t want to make it look like you used a digital tool. Once you are finished with this, select Apply.
If you want to adjust the overall coloration of your photo, head back to the Edit menu and select Color Mixer. This is an amazing tool that lets you adjust the Red, Green, and Blue of your image individually. If you want your artwork to have a cooler tone, with your Red’s less apparent, you can adjust these sliders to achieve that. When you are finished with your selections, press Apply.
Step 5: Save the Artwork
Once you are finished making these adjustments, head up to the Save menu at the top of your screen and select Computer. In the menu that appears, select the PDF tab and select Print. This will make sure that your file is print-ready!
The only thing left to do is print your artwork. I would recommend printing a couple of samples at a local print shop to make sure that your artwork is exactly how you want it before selling prints! It is best to get this figured out before printing 100 copies that are not how you want them.
Making Art Prints Is Easy With BeFunky
Making art prints is easy with BeFunky’s Photo Editor! You can adjust the Exposure, and Color, and use tools like the Clone tool and Paint Brush tool to make larger edits! This is so simple to do and will make creating art prints a breeze!
