How do you get your scanned inks to come out so cleanly on the computer? I can't seem to find a way to scan and edit them that doesn't leave my lines so ridged and sloppy.
I scan my inks with Image Capture, which has always worked pretty well for me. Make sure you have a good scanner, too! I’ve really only used Brother or Epson scanners, but they’ve all been really nice.
When you’re scanning, make sure your dpi is at least 300. The standard for print is gonna be between 400-600dpi, but 300 is fine if you’re just gonna post your images online. Make sure that you scan in color if you’ve used a blue or red pencil as an underdrawing. Grayscale is fine if you used graphite, because it’s all gonna look gray anyway and a grayscale image is a smaller file because it’s not holding on to useless color information. Scan your image as a jpeg if you’re just going to post it online; scan it as a tiff if you plan on printing it later.
You should get a pretty exact match as far as what the scanned image looks like compared to your actual drawing. Sometimes colors are a bit off, and the scanner will pick up some dust/noise, but that’s dealt with in the next step!
Then, I clean up my scans in Photoshop. I open the file, go to my color channel mixer on the right, and choose the blue filter. This will get rid of my blue pencils. Flatten the image. Next, I open my levels palette, adjust until i like the balance of black and white (this also helps get rid of dust/noise). Then, just clean up with your pencil tool.
That’s pretty much an overview of what I do. If your lines are looking too ridged (or “rasterized”), that could have to do with the scan itself?