How to Digitise Your Artwork
Friday 27th September 2013 Once you've decided to start selling your artwork online, it's important to make sure that the sales images you use on your Gallereo page show off your work properly. If you work in a digital medium, this is as simple as exporting some watermarked images from your favourite image editing program. If you work in a physical media, though, you'll need to find a good way to create digital images that show off your work to best effect. While it can take a bit of practice to get the hang of it, we've got some great tips to help make sure your images look as good as the reality. First of all, it's important to consider how you're going to create your sales images. If you work in a medium such as watercolours, you may be able to get away with using a flatbed scanner to create your images, although this can become a bit problematic if you work format larger than the scanning bed. While it would be possible to stitch multiple scans together in Photoshop, this can be difficult for those not intimately familiar with digital image editing. The most flexible option is to use a digital camera, but it comes along with its own set of challenges. If you're photographing a flat canvas, it's important to align the plane of your canvas with the image sensor of your camera to avoid the 'keystone effect' which can distort your images. This can be adjusted later in Photoshop, but the more accurate your initial photograph is, the less time you'll have to spend editing and the better your final result will be.. Alternatively, you could take several shots 'in situ', showing the piece standing on your easel or hung on a wall, and use that as your sales image along with several close-ups to show details. Personal preference comes into play here, but be sure to consider all the options to ensure you're showing your work in the best possible light. If you're working in a 3D medium such as sculpture or installation-style art, take several different images and close-ups to get a sense of the piece as a whole. You may want to consider building a lightbox to create the 'professional product shot' style that you seen in most product shots, although again, an in situ style shoot may help your customers imagine the piece in their own home more easily.
Finally, the most critical element to your sales images is also the biggest headache - ensuring colour accuracy. Those of you who don't work digitally may not be aware, but colours are not always faithfully reproduced during the image-creation process from camera to website. The last thing you want is disappointed customers who bought your work expecting different colours, so it's worth the expense to buy a colorimeter. A colorimeter is a device containing a simple camera lens that attaches to your computer and your monitor. It comes with a program that displays various colours on your monitor screen, measures the output, and then adjusts your computer colour settings to make sure they are accurate. For the serious artist, they're an absolutely indispensable tool.