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To make this as painless as possible, we'll lead you through the six simple steps needed to have your own Starving Artists gallery created. Don't forget you can upgrade to the Gold service at any time if you want to benefit from the extra gallery features or need your own Commission Details panel.
You must have at least one drawing available with which to open your gallery and, if you wish, a small photo, drawing or painting of yourself. Click on any of the steps below and you'll be taken to a full explanation and "How To" tips. |
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Before you can set up your gallery you have to get your drawings into your computer - and in a way that keeps your masterpieces looking their best. A SCANNER is the best means as it is unaffected by lighting conditions, the budgie kicking sand on your drawing... or your finger getting in front of the camera lens! If your drawing is too big to scan in one piece then scan it in bits and join them together again in your computer. How? Click here to take a look at my "How to" article at SibleyFineArt.com or (if you are really having problems) send me the bits and I'll try to piece it back together. A DIGITAL CAMERA can work quite well and is certainly better than nothing but you will probably have to experiment to get a good photo. Take a lot with different lighting conditions - outside in natural light is best, try to keep it flat and watch out for glare from the sun. You might like to try placing your drawing on the ground to photograph it as you stand over it. Try to keep it square with the sides of the viewfinder and don't let your own shadow fall across it! A CAMERA (preferably a 35mm SLR) can be just as good and is often better than a digital one. Follow the same advice as above and then mail me your photograph. Of course I can only guess at what it really looks like, but I'll have a good try at making it look just like your drawing. If you don't like the result, just say so and we can try again. |
If your scanner allows it, don't save your scan as a JPEG (JPG) or GIF. JPGs in particular lose tiny bits of your drawing every time you save so, if you can, save it as a TIFF, PSD, BMP or anything else on offer. As you are going to show your drawing on the Web it's not necessary to set a high resolution level. Eh? Well, the web will display your work at 72 pixels per inch (ppi) so you are just wasting time and file size by choosing to scan at say 300 ppi. However I suggest you scan at 100 ppi in colour for the actual scan then cut it down later. *Tip* - If your scanner won't allow you to send your scanned image directly to your favoured imaging application then instead open the application and look under "File" for "Open Special", "Import" or similar. This should enable you to select the scanner from the application itself and link directly to it. Now that you have your scan opened in your favourite imaging program (I prefer Adobe Photoshop) you need to set about getting it ready for sending to Starving Artists. For graphite pencil drawings and charcoal (or anything else without visible colour) alter your picture to the following:
For colour work, be particularly careful of file size and choose a lower JPG quality if necessary. Try to get your file size below 150KB if you can but no more than 400KB or our system will refuse it. And please DON'T load your image into a document such as a Word .DOC file before you send it! You will just create a nightmare document that can take up to 90 minutes to download (as we know from experience!) and which we probably can't use.... Just save your file to your Desktop as a JPG so it's easily found later when you need to send it to us in step 3. |