How get best digital image of color pencil drawing for printing use

Thanks all,

I will try your suggestions.

There may be colors in the drawing that can’t be reproduced with CMYK offset inks used to print a postcard. Your printer should know how to best convert your RGB scan or photograph of the drawing to CMYK for the best color match. Have a conversation with your printer about this.

So to start with, whether you photograph or scan the drawing, keep it in RGB as long as you can. Do any color corrections that are needed in the RGB color space. It will help you out immensely if you calibrate your monitor first.

Often, when making color pencil drawings, both paper color and paper texture are vital elements in its creation as well as its reproduction. If you intend to include the paper surface in the reproduction, appropriate lighting is required so that texture is neither lost or overpowering. This makes photography, rather than scanning a preferred option.

You may also consider photographing a blank sheet, then scanning the art so that you may eliminate its paper surface, then assemble them as layers where adjustment of color does not affect the paper color and/or texture.

[EDIT] There is an added advantage if you plan to print or display the reproductions side-by-side in that the paper surface and texture will not vary from one image to the next.

The 300 dpi mostly comes from a popular litho standard screen of 150 lpi. Ask your printer what minimum resolution they ask for to get the best results, as the line screen greatly affects your effective resolution needed.

The type of artwork will also make a difference if you can get away with less resolution (soft smeared pencil, versus super sharp hard edge clean crisp strokes where you constantly sharpen the pencil with every stroke)

Use a scanner and scan the image at a larger scale and in 16bit RGB, then do what editing is necessary in a layered, profiled RGB image and scale and separate a flattened copy to the size and CMYK space requested by your print provider.

If you prefer to also sharpen the downsampled image.