Crest outline

Today I worked on a family crest. The customer brought in a tiny fabric banner with an age-blurred print of the crest he wanted.

Thank God for Photoshop. Like every other shop, we have a trusty copy machine, but figuring out greyscale detail was important. I scanned the little guy at 600dpi resolution. Wait on the scanner, get a cup of coffee, then pull up the trusty curves tool (CTRL+M). Mess around with your points and pull out the right dark levels. (More about curves here)

I always print out a copy about 30% bigger than the actual tattoo size. Then it's a matter of mentally figuring out where the line should be. A little compensation here, a little tweak tweak there.

Alright, two more steps. First, almost half of this is a mirror image (with reflection symmetry). So I only trace one side, plus certain areas that won't mirror (helmet, axe, text). Scan the drawing into Photoshop, wait on the scanner again then select and flip what needs to be flipped.

(View larger image. Oh, and the circles were added in Photoshop - ah, perfect circles)