{"id":149,"date":"2017-04-03T20:07:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-03T09:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/?p=149"},"modified":"2025-11-17T07:28:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T20:28:09","slug":"capture-images-of-your-drawings-like-a-pro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/03\/capture-images-of-your-drawings-like-a-pro\/","title":{"rendered":"Capture images of your drawings like a pro"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There’s nothing better than showing your drawings and sketches in the best way possible. Here are some tips and techniques on how to make them look their best.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This post\u00a0is inspired by one of the questions I had after giving a drawing workshop the other night: what are the best ways of capturing what we sketch, and getting them into formats we can use and share<\/strong>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Great question.\u00a0These days, it’s dead easy to capture and share your sketches using your smartphone or tablet, but it\u2019s worth knowing a few finer details if you want to get the best results. Here are some tips and app recommendations to get you capturing your sketches like a pro. All are free<\/strong>, and (unless otherwise stated) all are available for both iOS and Android<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just so you can see how the results of these recommendations compare, here is a photo of my sketch, taken with my iPhone:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It depends on how you\u2019re going to use the sketches<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First things first: you have to know what you want to capture your sketches for<\/em>. It\u2019s all about where your sketches will end up:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instant sharing on social media or your intranet<\/strong> – Snap away! That camera phone is fine<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capturing for project work or for a presentation<\/strong> – You\u2019ll want your images nice, white and clean, in a way that fits your workflow<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enhancing, colouring and editing<\/strong> – A smooth vectorised image is best<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instant sharing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you just want an image of your sketches to share on Instagram, X and so on (or maybe your work intranet or chat room), the camera app on your smartphone is fine. Some pro tips:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  • Always get your sketch in as much light as possible<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Watch out for shadows<\/strong>\u00a0of either you or your phone<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Try dynamic angles<\/strong> for added interest<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Include the edges of the paper or sketchbook, and the markers you used; people love to know more about the process behind the magic<\/strong> of the final sketch<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Capturing for project work or for a presentation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Your camera phone probably won\u2019t give you a sharp clean bright squared-off image, so go for a scanner app<\/strong> like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    CamScanner – for iOs or Android<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Office Lens – for iOS or Android<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Scanbot<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    TinyScanner<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Both of these are mainly meant for document scanning (as well as receipts and business cards), but their image scanning is great too. Both have great edge detection and perspective fixing\u2026 so no more wonky images at odd angles to tidy up! What\u2019s more, both include optical character recognition (OCR), so depending on how neat your writing is, they will automatically capture that in an editable format too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Office Lens is perfect if you already use OneNote or OneDrive, and you can export your scans as editable Office files. It also has a great feature of being able to toggle between \u2018Photo\u2019 view, \u2018Document\u2019 view and \u2018Whiteboard\u2019 view, depending on what result you\u2019re after. The \u2018Whiteboard\u2019 view can give amazing results of your scrawls on a whiteboard, even in a dim room. But beware! As you can see in the demo image below, coloured shapes end up looking pretty janky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Note that Scanbot and TinyScanner knock out the colour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Enhancing, colouring and editing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Maybe you need to capture your sketches to tidy up a lot more in an image editing application? Or add colours, or combine sketches together? If that\u2019s the case, any of the scanning apps above are fine, but try Adobe Capture<\/strong> (for iOS or Android), and capture your sketches as vectorised images. It does a tremendous job of cleaning up, clarifying and smoothing out the lines of the sketch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Try them out<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    I hope these tips have given you some ideas for how to get better results when capturing and sharing images of your sketches. What works best for you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    There’s nothing better than showing your drawings and sketches in the best way possible. Here are some tips and techniques on how to make them look their best. This post\u00a0is inspired by one of the questions I had after giving a drawing workshop the other night: what are the best ways of capturing what we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[72,71],"class_list":{"0":"post-149","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-fun-and-creativity","7":"category-getting-started","8":"tag-capturing","9":"tag-scanning","10":"entry"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"sidebar-featured":false,"genesis-singular-images":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Ben Crothers","author_link":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/author\/prestosketching_uao6s0\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"There’s nothing better than showing your drawings and sketches in the best way possible. Here are some tips and techniques on how to make them look their best. This post\u00a0is inspired by one of the questions I had after giving a drawing workshop the other night: what are the best ways of capturing what we…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150,"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions\/150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}