Troubles with dimensions and page size

[camicaze009]

I'm not entirely sure if this belongs in this thread specifically so please tell me if I'm out of place lol.
Anyways, I started this mini-series: https://tapastic.com/episode/519575 as a form of a "prep" before I go on and make more story-driven comics. But one of my main annoyances with this (besides the amount of time I take to make these simple comics) is the size and dimensions of the canvases I use. At first, I just sketched in a 5000x7000-ish cnvas and resized it into a very stretched page of 940x4000 and you can clearly see how the resolution dropped significantly. So, now I work with dimensions of 940x1600 but I still don't like how it looks. I feel like you can still see it pixelated and not very polished like in other comics I've seen, even if the resolution for every page is 2000-2500

So, what are usually your dimensions in your comics? Tips are surely welcomed. I'm very new to comic-making I use Paint Tool SAI but I'm thinking of opening up and using photoshop more often. Thanks!

[akkoneko]

Dimensions, dimensions...

For my comic, I scan my work from a piece of letter size paper, then crop and resize. What I do is just change the width )(to make 800 x anything) and make the proportions scaled to minimize distortion. I make sure it's scanned at 600 dpi, and have the comic maintain that when I resize it. (That's using Photoshop... I'm not really familiar with how you can do it in SAI.)

[ryoko]

My pages vary in size depending on what paper I've used that day, and I scan my pages in at 300dpi because I re-ink my lines on the computer. I usually have my canvas size on Clip Studio set around 3300X5500 at 300dpi and do all my finishing work at that scale and save as a Clip Studio file until I'm done, then it's saved as a TIFF to prevent any lose of quality. When I'm ready to upload the page, I head over to Photoshop and resize it down to 940X___ and save as the highest quality JPG that I can. It never looks blurry or pixelated for me when I do this.

[Chopythes]

When I'm making comics digitally I'm always at 2480x3508 pixels at 300DPI and then I just schrink it down to 600px or 800px.

Traditinally made comics are usually scanned at 700DPI, and re-sized down to 300DPi and 600px-800-px depending on which site I'm using the comic for!

(And I always use photoshop for this, I've noticed it doesn't loose the quality at all, plus it's the only software I've got XD)

[marygold]

Always always always draw larger than what you are going to post online. I learned this the hard way. I usually set my drawing dimensions around 8.5x11 inches (standard US paper size) which goes to around 2500 pixels wide (you can imagine how small a 940 pixel wide drawing is)

When I finish, I duplicate my art and then resize it down to 940 without touching the dpi function. My software maintains a good dpi for me. The drawing will obviously be a little more blurry but not drastically. As long as your readers can see what's going on, it's fine. But make sure your original is in high quality!

If you zoom in on even popular comics like King's Folly or City of Blank, you can see that the lines are not that defined. That's simply because they downsized a copy of their page for Tapastic. Hope this helps!

[keii4ii]

At first, I just sketched in a 5000x7000-ish cnvas and resized it into a very stretched page of 940x4000 and you can clearly see how the resolution dropped significantly.

Don't do this! Of course the result will look bad, because 5000:7000 and 940:4000 do not have the same ratio.

All you need to do is shrink your 5000x7000 image to fit within 940 pixels, while maintaining the same ratio. Photoshop does this automatically. When resizing your image, do not change the width and height separately. Just enter a new value (e.g. 940) for the width, and the height should adjust automatically.

If the height does not change automatically, you need to click on the chain link icon on the left side of the width/height field in the resizing window. That will tell Photoshop to keep the same ratio.

[DMBrigman]

As others have said it is always a good idea to work bigger than the final output. With digital art I find my lines look better when sized down because it hides the shakiness inherent in digital art.

I use Clip Studio Paint with an 11X17 canvas at 600 dpi, I export as a Tiff, import into Adobe Illustrator where letters are added, then export as a Png scaled proportionally down to 940 px wide. I would do a test piece of art and play around with different export options until you find something that works for you.

[dojo]

I work in 3300x5100 at 300dpi and just shrink it down for the site (I set the width to 940 and just let photoshop handle the height). Honestly, most artists you see do this. Anytime I try to draw on a smaller scale than that, I wind up really disliking the results, so I highly recommend using @keii4ii's advice and working at that larger size you picked out and just make sure you're sizing it down properly so that it's not being distorted.

[camicaze009]

Yikes sorry for the late replies. Thank you so much you guys! I have made my piece with the size problem thanks to the whole Photoshop-ratio thing. It takes some extra work but it definitely shows how better it looks And the traditional art-type comics will definitely come in handy soon, too.