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November 27th, 2007

Software for editing black and white line drawings

I’m at my parents’ house in Wales for a day or two – hence no diagrams as I didn’t bring any means to make them appear on the internet. Normally I use a reconditioned tin-opener, a broom handle and an A4 sheet of paper with a knot in it.

Talking of diagrams and technology, I have a question. I need to think about getting some new software for editing cartoons and I thought you’d be the people to ask. Now, I know I ask you things like this all the time, but you are so good at answering that it seems a shame not to. I hope you don’t mind too much.

Let me start from the beginning. At the moment I use a splendid little programme called ‘Microsoft Image Editor’. It is a very good programme for doing what I do – scanning and editing black and white line drawings. In particular I find the interface far more intuitive than Photoshop or ‘The Gimp’ (an open source version of Photoshop) and it makes the whole ‘editing of drawings’ process much quicker than using those aformentioned programmes.

It is, unfortunately, a deeply unfashionable programme to use in the black and white drawings industry. I endure much scorn from my peers whenever I mention it and there is much tutting and shaking of heads behind (and indeed in front of) my back. In the light of this constant hounding (and for other less interesting reasons) I must now find a new image-editing programme to use.

This is what I need it to do:

I have used Photoshop, but found that:

(a) It doesn’t get on with my scanner. I’m willing to buy a new scanner, but I’d need to know that Photoshop would get on with it.
(b) It is very slow compared with my beloved Microsoft programme. Perhaps that is because I’ve used it a lot less, but it still seems laborious in comparison.
(3) I experienced other miscellaneous problems that frustrated me at the time which I have now forgotten about. These were almost certainly down to user inexperience and idiocy.

I know that Illustrator is widely used in the ‘black and white drawings’ sector. But it is dashed expensive. But sometimes expensive works out cheaper in the long run.

No, I’m not getting a Mac.

Any advice on the programmes you use for editing images would be most welcomed. Their ability to do things to black and white line drawings in particular is especially of interest. Thanks in advance for any replies – they really are appreciated. I’ll probably have some follow up questions to ask too, so if you do comment do check back.

38 Comments »



This is a single Cartoon Blog entry, posted by Dave on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 8:12 pm.

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38 Responses to “Software for editing black and white line drawings”


  1. Dave says:

    PS. The Mac comment is of course larking around on my part. I do of course know that they are very good and I might get one at some point. But they are not the solution I need at this moment for reasons that are complex but dull.

    November 27th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
  2. Rhys says:

    Back in the day (i.e. about version 8 or so) Paint Shop Pro used to be very good for this sort of thing, but it’s been taken over by Corel and may or may not be OK any more. Cheaper (far cheaper) than Photoshop, more intuitive than the GIMP.

    I’ll also show my ignorance by asking whether there’s anything else in the Adobe Creative Suite other than Photoshop and Illustrator (maybe Fireworks or something) that might be suitable. I do use Illustrator myself, but mostly for poster design.

    November 27th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
  3. Wulf says:

    The Gimp isn’t that bad although it does take a little getting used to.

    For vector graphics (ie. the kind you use with Illustrator, which allow you to drag lines around and resize without getting blocky) Inkscape is worth a look.

    November 27th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
  4. Chris Darnell says:

    For my graphic editing on a day to day basis I use a free option called Paint.NET. Worth giving a try.

    It is certainly easier to use than Photoshop, simpler than Gimp, but has some great features.

    Not sure how the scanner bit of it works though as I have not had occasion to do that.

    Hope that helps.

    November 27th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
  5. Jeremiah says:

    It would be almost a completely different workflow, but have you considered using a pen tablet (Wacom is the first brand that comes to mind)? You could then draw in software and bypass scanning. Not sure if being tied to the computer for drawing would work for you.

    November 27th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
  6. RobGT says:

    Hi Dave. Recent addition to your blog readers and really enjoying it so far!

    Can I make a suggestion? Stick with MS Image Editor. If it does everything you need it do, is easy for you to use, doesn’t require any hardware updates and won’t cost anything, why buy something different just so you can be ‘credible’ with your peers?

    I’m no MS fan (I’m one of those tedious Mac fans), but some of their stuff does what it needs to do.

    November 27th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
  7. Doug Chaplin says:

    Well, you could try Photshop Elements which is PS’s baby sibling, or as Rhys says, Paint Shop Pro, but very little gives you the sheer power and elegance of PS itself. As for the problem with your scanner, PS should work easily with any scanner. Have you looked for an updated version of your scanner driver / software on the HP site?
    Other progammes you could look at include Canvas which combines the vector drawing of Illustrator with image editing capabilites and more. Or take a look at the various programmes by Serif. Free versions (usually of the software from several versions back) are available at freeserifsoftware.com. All their softeware is competitively priced, but one tip: ignore the upgrade offers on this site, they are not to the most recent versions of the software.

    November 27th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
  8. ash says:

    I’d also reccommend Paint Shop Pro (formarly by Jasc). I have Version 9, and it’s still just as wonderful and intuitive as the old versions (I’ve used Versions 5, 7, 8 and 9).

    I also have Illustrator and Photoshop and Gimp, and I think they’re rubbish. They just aren’t intuitive, and they sill seem to me to be fudged together for Windows (i.e. designed primarily for linux or mac).

    Paint Shop Pro has always provided the same tools (and more) as Photoshop, but in a more intuitive layout. As an experienced computer user, I picked up PSP in an hour, and mastered it in about 3 days. I’ve had Photoshop for over a year, and I still find myself closing the thing in easperation and using something else.

    November 27th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
  9. ash says:

    I appear to have had crumbs under some of my keys, which is why I have made so many spelling mistakes in that post.

    November 27th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
  10. John says:

    Illustrator is a vector graphics package – a very different thing. Basically, it’s no use for scanning and retouching, for which you need a bitmap package like Photoshop. However, MS Image Editor sucks badly. Once you try an image editor with layers, proper transarency and feathering, you’ll never go back! Almost anything will be better and easier to use than Image Editor, once you’ve got over the initial hump.

    If your budget won’t stretch to Photoshop (which is very expensive) or you just don’t like it, have another look at the Gimp (it changes constantly, usually for the better). There’s even a version called GimpShop that has all its menus rewritten to resemble those in Photoshop!

    Alternatively, you could try Photoshop Elements, which is the cut-down “consumer” version of Photoshop (still fairly expensive, but comes free with some scanners that cost less than the purchase price of the software!). However, this “cutting down” is with the specific purpose of targeting digital photography, so the feature set might not suit you. (From your description, it will certainly do everything you mentioned and lots more.) It supports scanners, but I couldn’t speak for your particular scanner.

    However, if it’s an old scanner, you could possibly save yourself a lot of trouble by buying a new one. I have a Canon LiDE 30, which gives 600dpi scans in full colour, is pretty fast (much faster than my old parallel port scanner was, or the old SCSI scanners I’ve used), and it’s even powered by USB so there’s no more power cable to manage.

    Paintshop Pro, I personally hate. However, if you like the interface it’s worth a try. Another alternative is Google’s Picasa. I’ve never tried it myself but if you just need basic features like you described, it could be just the ticket. And it’s free, too.

    One little tip, too – there’s nothing stopping you using your MS package or the HP one purely to scan the image, and then to load the saved bitmap into a more suitable program for the fiddling around.

    If you want to move on to vector drawing (which might be what you meant with your Illustrator comment), give Inkscape a try first. It’s a free, open-source vector package that does lots of really neat stuff. At the least, have a look to see whether the extras that Illustrator gives you are worth it to you.

    pax et bonum

    November 27th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
  11. James says:

    I’d say that Illustrator is almost certainly what you really want, but that if you were to use that you would want to use a graphics tablet or something to draw directly on the computer, rather than drawing on paper and scanning it. I know Scott Adams has written that he draws Dilbert on some kind of cunning screen that he can draw directly on. Of course, that would only serve to make the already expensive Illustrator even more so.

    Must. Resist. Urge. To. Recommend. Mac…

    November 27th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
  12. Kennedy says:

    Have you considered Paint.NET.

    http://www.getpaint.net/

    Somewhat more sophisticated that Paint but less mind-mangling complex than the GIMP.

    What’s more – it’s free.

    Kennedy

    November 27th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
  13. Chris says:

    I’m a die-hard Fireworks fan, but it does cost quite a bit of the green stuff. And I’m not talking lettuces.

    It may be worth you looking at a free piece of (Windows-only, as far as I know) software called Paint.Net. Get it here: http://www.getpaint.net/

    You could also take a look at Xara Extreme (which sounds like a kind of off-road car) http://www.xaraxtreme.org/.

    November 27th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
  14. Chris says:

    (2 comments to get around the link limit)

    There is a long list of other software here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_graphics_software

    I’m also a big fan of Inkscape (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_graphics_software) but I only use it for vector drawing, so I’m not sure how good it is at raster stuff. It may be worth a look.

    November 27th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
  15. Ann says:

    Here is the ad that appears on your page today!

    November 28th, 2007 at 12:17 am
  16. Al says:

    An amateur cartoonist friend of mine swears by (well, he’s mumbled positive words about it) Inkscape which is an open source (free) vector editor, similar to Illustrator.

    He’s scanned some drawings in and made them look substantially better than the originals. This is even more impressive when you see his cheapo tat scanner.

    Also, PNGs are great and GIFS suck. I would lecture more but it’s late (or early) and the reasons are tediously technical and lamentably legal. Either way, your style of drawing should be going no where near a JPEG!

    November 28th, 2007 at 12:29 am
  17. Matt Glover says:

    Wacom’s Cintiq is the fancy “draw on screen” machine. Very expensive but apparently worth it if you have lots of cartoons to do in short spaces of time.

    In twelve years of freelancing, I’ve never owned a Mac or any Adobe software. Again, both are way too expensive and you can do exactly the same things with much cheaper equivalents.

    I’d recommend Corel’s PhotoPaint X3 as it will do all of what you’ve described above, plus a lot more. You can get it in a suite that has CorelDraw (an illustrator equivalent) and a few other nice things to play with. Not sure how much it is in the UK, but it’s around $800 here in Australia.

    As I do mainly colour work, I’ve been using a combination of Corel Painter 9.5 as it reproduces natural media very well and PhtoPaint X3. I draw with a Wacom Intuos 2, though still resort to the scanner for really detailed stuff.

    Hope that helps a bit!

    Matt

    November 28th, 2007 at 1:21 am
  18. Hennell says:

    Illustrator would probably be overkill. It would be quite the step up from Microsoft Image Editor (Really?) and you probably wouldn’t need most of it.

    It sounds like all you need is something that resizes, handles most image formats, communicates with a scanner, allows selections and basic editing and curves/levels functions*.

    Quite frankly almost any stuff would do that, so its going to just be a matter of your own preference (and maybe price ;D ).

    I personally use Gimp for everything, which does all you need but the interface isn’t the easiest to pick up. Gimpshop is an alternative version, which is meant to have a better interface if you want to try that. There’s also paint.net which is said to be very good, and being free there’s no harm in trying these things.

    For paid programs I have less knowledge but just find 30 day trials of stuff and have a fiddle. I’d agree with above that Paint Shop Pro is easy to pick up and nice to use, although loads of people say that about photoshop which I dislike, so really nothing beats trying it yourself.

    (*Added because if you don’t use this you should, it makes blacks blacker and whites whiter and is great for cleaning up line art.)

    November 28th, 2007 at 1:50 am
  19. Anne says:

    I use Photoshop and (ahem) a Mac, and I have Illustrator if I need it–but I’m working primarily with product photographs, logos, and general decor (such as designing buttons and little things that say “home”), so I really need Photoshop. It’s also what I “grew up” with. I, too, find Gimp a bit counter-intuitive, though I’m working hard to learn it.

    Having said all that, if Microsoft Image Editor works for you, why not use it? People love to do that scorning thing. PC users scorn Mac users, who scorn right back. People who love open-source scorn those who buy their stuff while the buyers view the open-source folks as commie pinkos. It’s a little like the worldwide Anglican Communion at the moment, isn’t it?

    I say enough already. You should use what makes you happy and lets you get your work done efficiently. Actually you should use whatever lets you get done with all the fiddling and GIFing and JPGing so that you can do your real work, which is the actual drawing of the cartoons. Let the scorners scorn all they want to. If you’re delivering an adequate image in the format that’s needed, who cares how you get there?

    When it comes to Photoshop and scanners, I’ve found that regular checking of HP for drivers is a must. That might help things go faster if you absolutely need to go in that direction.

    Anne

    November 28th, 2007 at 3:05 am
  20. Fr. S says:

    Everyone else is speaking of software, so I won’t add my bit too much. I use Paint Shop Pro 8 and have been for many years and it does all I need it to do. The old 20/80 rule for software applies – you will use 20% of a package’s functionality for 80% of the time, so if something simple does what it has to, then use it and stay sane (and less poor).

    When you mention the images are massive, I wonder if you actually need them to be scanned in at such a high DPI (dots per inch) or resolution.

    Years ago I was amazed that at 300dpi an image could be 1Mb and at 72dpi (which is fine for the web) is 15k. Given that most of your work is simple line drawings, dropping the dpi even for the print work would

    a) reduce the messy bits you have to clean up
    b) make them smaller and easier to manipulate in software that you like and want to use.

    iPriest

    November 28th, 2007 at 8:08 am
  21. Fr. S says:

    …oh and don’t give into the Mac brigade because they are soooo expensive and you still have to buy expensive software.

    My Mac Mini just sits there, sulking because I won’t buy it Photoshop or Final Cut. The stuff out of the iLife/iWork box is far too noddy.

    November 28th, 2007 at 8:11 am
  22. MadPriest says:

    Get a Mac

    November 28th, 2007 at 8:12 am
  23. Russ says:

    Mac Mac Mac. Happy to advise off blog on this one, if that’s useful.

    November 28th, 2007 at 8:31 am
  24. Chris says:

    You might like to look at Paint.NET – it’s another sort of Photoshop/Gimp-a-like thingy except a lot less complicated. It’s free, and quite good for simple editing jobs.

    November 28th, 2007 at 9:07 am
  25. Chris P says:

    I picked up a PSP and in an hour I had played several games, including golf and driving around Hawaii.

    November 28th, 2007 at 9:16 am
  26. Sarah Blow says:

    Hi There,

    Something that I did see that seemed to work well for the comic guys was manga studio. The basic one would do what you are looking for, it was specifically designed with line drawing and working over the top of it in mind after scanning… there’s a basic version and a pro one. I’m tempted to get the basic one myself to have a play with.

    Then again who cares what’s cool, go with what works for you! That’s the most important thing. Don’t get pushed into technologies and tools just for the sake of it! Bear in mind that people like what is there now and aren’t complaining. It’s the perfectionist in you that wants to get the images cleaner! :)

    BTW I assumed you were based in the US for some reason ;) Nice to see you’re actually reasonably local to me. :)

    November 28th, 2007 at 9:32 am
  27. David Reimer says:

    I’m comment #13 (lucky me!), and no one has mentioned Inkscape yet?

    Time somebody did. (Apologies if some has and I’ve missed it. But CTRL-F didn’t find it!)

    Inkscape! You want Inkscape. And run it on anything you like. And don’t pay for it. There. Sorted.

    (P.s. I don’t know if it will commune with your scanner. But you can always save your scans to a file, using the native scanner software, then open the file in your image editing tool. Works for me.)

    November 28th, 2007 at 9:53 am
  28. Dave says:

    Wow. Thanks for all the comments thus far. I’m just popping in very briefly on dialup so I won’t respond at this moment, but I do have various things to say and questions to ask which I will do later all being well. Thanks again!

    November 28th, 2007 at 9:56 am
  29. chris clark says:

    I do commend the Photopaint from Corel its part of the Coreldraw suite, you can often find early versions for a few pounds in the cheap end of line bookshops “The Works” etc. I find it much easier to use than Photoshop.

    With regard to the scanner any with a TWAIN driver should work …but I know that may not be the case with yours…

    BTW TWAIN really does stand for Things Without An Intelligent Name …

    Talking of acronyms one of the best corruptions I heard was for PCMCIA (those slotty things on a laptop) it actually stands for, boringly, Personal Computer Memory Card Industry Association but someone suggested People Cant Memorise Computer Industry Acronyms…which is far preferable!

    November 28th, 2007 at 10:26 am
  30. Matt W says:

    This has the makings of a religious war.

    I think you are probably going to end up with something good for vectors (lines) and something cheap for raster (scanning etc.).

    My suggestions:

    Get Irfanview (www.irfanview.com) anyway. Doesn’t do vector, but it is v. good and free. And very good for fileformats and things.

    For the vector stuff, CorelDraw used to be good. Not sure now.

    I use Fireworks, which is very good for stuff like web animations and web integration, file optimisation amd so on if you are going there.

    Can’t help with a cheap vector editing package. Sorry.

    The most important thing is probably to spend 6 weeks buggering about before making any binding decisions, and to move incrementally.

    On the graphics tablet – suggest getting one from an Aldi special buy, which is where I got mine.

    The other thing that springs to mind is an Etch-a-Sketch.

    Matt W

    November 28th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
  31. Matt W says:

    >Mac

    A what?

    Aha. An expensive badge with a slow PC attached.

    (;-)

    November 28th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
  32. Simon says:

    Get a mac

    oh

    November 28th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
  33. Dave says:

    Thanks again for all of the suggestions. I will be trying one or two of the programmes that you suggested – Paint.net and Inkscape for starters. My delayed moderation meant that a lot of you said the same things, which is great as it shows they must be good.

    A few points:

    1) My scanner. I have more or less given up on the HP scanner software as it just doesn’t work reliably. The scanner is a scanjet 3400c. Maybe it needs new drivers or something. I have spent hours messing around with it in the past and don’t intend to do so again, so now I only use alternative software to scan with.

    2) Graphics tablet. I have one but don’t really like using it.

    3) Image Composer. I can’t really keep using it unfortunately as I need to have it installed on other machines and no longer have the disc as it belonged to a former workplace. It is not available for download anywhere as far as I can establish. It was originally bundled with Frontpage 2000 or somesuch.

    November 29th, 2007 at 8:51 am
  34. suburbanhen says:

    I know what you mean about the peer pressure to have a more fashionable program. If my peers ever got wind that I am still using PS 5.5, I’d be ostracised!

    Are you interested in selling your graphics tablet, then?

    November 29th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
  35. Karen in Laguna Niguel says:

    Dave, if you’re going to sell your graphics tablet maybe you could bundle it with the fold-up bike you bought . . .

    November 29th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
  36. Matt W says:

    A final thought:

    Have you considered creating a font of your cartoon handwriting?

    The whole thing perhaps has a lot of potential for interactive workshops etc.

    December 1st, 2007 at 8:26 am
  37. Steve Hearn says:

    Dave, photoshop IS what you need! I guess you may need more RAM in your pc to make it run faster and it should ’see’ your HP scanner OK? Anyway, your coming round Monday AM for coffee and a look at the easel, let me show you how photoshop works on my PC while your here and maybe that will help you.
    See ya real soon!

    December 2nd, 2007 at 11:51 pm
  38. Rob Redpath says:

    Sorry this is so short, but here’s what I use atm…

    http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/

    December 12th, 2007 at 1:58 pm