Crisp lines from scans in grayscale?

 > I use photoshop6 to manipulate and clean up, 
 > my hand drawn images (black ink on white paper).   
 > what is the best way to maintain crisp clean  
 > lines when moving from bitmap to grayscale? 

The answer is simple: work upscale.

Scan your art at least two times larger than you want your final image to be. When you make the conversion to grayscale tell photoshop NOT to change size. Now you can go about your manipulations as normal, and when you reproduce it to final size you'll have a nice crisp image. (You may want to utilize some sharpening, but be careful.) If your images are to be reproduced with printing methods, and the images will be halftones (because you've introduced gray) then consult the printer and get the screen count. Set the resolution of the final image to be at least 2.5 times the screen count, and watch your "Image Size" dialog to make the resolution setting achieve the printed measurements in pixels wide by pixels high. (Or inches or whatever.) If the image is LINE (meaning no grays) then you'll need 4-times the final size. You'll be rewarded with nice, crisp images in the final reproduction.
      In reality, you may want to compare the results of scanning in grayscale mode in the first place -- unless there's some particular reason you wish to work in bit map mode at first to change or modify the image. That way you won't need to make the conversion.

Sending your images out...

When sending the images to an end user or client, make sure you understand which platform they're using. Photoshop gives you a dialog called "TIFF Options" that allows you to set the byte order. The 8-bit packets of data MUST be correct for the target platform or unfortunate results may occur. (Macs can go either way but Pee Cees can't!)

Be sure to take a look at Bert Monroy or Sharron Steuer's books in our Photoshop Bibliography" you'll get a lot of really cool artistly effects you can do real easily.
:-)

PS: If anyone would like to share their techniques with our readers, we'd love to hear from you. Just let us know!

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