How to Digitize Artwork: A Step-by-Step Guide for Artists and Creatives

Learning how to turn drawings into digital art differs from learning how to make digital art from the start. The first one, also called art digitization, converts physical illustrations and art pieces into a digital format. It turns a physical copy of your artwork into a soft or digital copy, ready for digital processing or reproduction.

Artists digitize their works for various reasons. Let’s explore each one below and discover the best practices for digitizing artwork for prints, merchandise, reproductions or backups.

Why Digitize Your Artwork?

When you digitize your drawings for printing or backup, you set up reliable protection for your creation while also making it more accessible. Reasons to digitize art include:

• To preserve your originals from damage or fading. Digitizing your artwork creates a high-resolution copy that you can display without light and dust damaging the original. A digital copy helps preserve the integrity of your original piece and prolong its lifespan.
• To share your work online and build a digital portfolio. Digitizing your art enables you to reach a wider audience and makes your art more accessible. It allows you to build an online portfolio, which is a convenient way to let others view or examine your work, potentially attracting new clients and supporters.
• To create high-quality art prints, giclée reproductions, or merchandise. Art digitization captures every aspect of your work, including the colors, shadows, gradients and details, as accurately as possible. It allows you to create reproductions, like giclée prints and merchandise, without compromising your art’s quality.
• To protect your art with digital backups. Having a digital copy of your art protects you from loss due to theft, fire or natural disasters. It enables you to store multiple copies for backup and peace of mind, ensuring you always have access to your creative legacy.

Two Main Ways to Digitize Artwork

There is no single best way to digitize art, as it always depends on several factors, such as the type of art you’re looking to digitize, its size and the medium used. Two of the most common ways are scanning and photographing, with each method offering unique strengths and weaknesses.

Scanning Artwork

Scanning works best for flat and small-to-medium-sized works, such as drawings, watercolors or illustrations. Two types of scanners that are often used for this process are a flatbed scanner and a large-format scanner.

A flatbed scanner is ideal for smaller art pieces and is used by placing the work face down on a glass surface as a moving sensor scans it. Flatbed scanners deliver high resolution and color accuracy and are gentle on delicate originals. They are also affordable and widely available.

Large-format scanners, meanwhile, are designed for oversized artworks, such as large paintings and posters that exceed the standard flatbed size. They can scan large works in one go and maintain consistent color and detail, but they are more expensive and less common.

Scanning artwork for prints or archiving yields a high-quality reproduction of the originals. However, they often have size restrictions and have a potential for stitching errors, especially for large pieces, which can lead to color mismatches and visible seams.

Photographing Artwork

Photographing artwork is best for large paintings, textured surfaces and framed works. It typically uses a DSLR camera or a smartphone to create a digital reproduction of the work. DSLR cameras are best for professional-quality digitization because they offer a higher resolution and often have better lenses than smartphone cameras. Plus, the manual settings allow for more precise results. They’re ideally used for large, detailed or high-value artwork.

Smartphone cameras could also work for informal portfolios or if the intention is quick sharing on social media. They work best for small works and sketches. However, while modern smartphones have advanced sensors and software, they may still struggle to capture colors and fine details accurately. If you aim to produce professional prints, giclée reproductions, or a digital archive, a DSLR or mirrorless camera is the better option.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Digitizing Art

Digitizing your art is a reliable way to protect your creative investment. It helps you expand your reach and allows you to preserve your original work and protect it from loss or damage. When digitizing art, keep these common mistakes — and how to avoid them — in mind.

Shooting in Poor Lighting

Shooting in dim or uneven lighting often results in glare and shadows. You may see inaccurate colors that make your work look unprofessional or far from the original. To avoid this, shoot in bright, even lighting, preferably during the day or using daylight-balanced lamps. Shooting at 45-degree angles to capture colors and details accurately is the best way to photograph artworks for digital use.

Using Low Resolution

Low-resolution images lack detail and can result in pixelated or blurry images, especially when printed or zoomed in. Avoid these issues by scanning your art at a high resolution to capture all the fine details and produce high-quality prints.

Saving Only in Lossless Formats

The JPEG format compresses files, which can degrade the quality of your work and limit editing flexibility. Instead, save your files in lossless formats, like PNGs.

Ignoring Color Calibration

Color plays an important role in the overall quality of an art piece. Without calibrating your equipment, the colors in the digital file may not match the original. Use a color calibration tool or a gray card during the digitization process. Regularly calibrate your monitor to ensure color accuracy.

Waiting Too Long to Digitize

Artwork can fade or degrade over time. Waiting too long to digitize your art risks losing your only copy. Digitize drawings for printing or archiving as soon as possible after completion to preserve their original quality and to ensure you always have a backup copy.

Digitizing and Printing Artwork With Tribeca Printworks

Tribeca Printworks offers professional fine art scanning and reproduction services for artists and photographers. We produce museum-quality giclée prints on archival paper and canvas, and offer custom framing and mounting suitable for your work.

We have an expert team to help artists who will guide you on how to make prints of digital art to achieve color accuracy and detail. Talk to our professionals about printing your digitized artwork while staying true to the original’s look and feel.

Bring Your Artwork Into the Digital World

Ready to preserve and share your art? Tribeca Printworks offers professional scanning, printing and framing services to help you digitize your work and turn it into gallery-quality prints. Contact us today for more information on our services.