Scanning mostly white painting

[lnicolemac]

I have a really difficult time - actually, pretty much impossible time - trying to scan acrylic paintings (on paper) that have a lot of white. Even if they aren't pure white, the white parts get blasted out with no detail. I make sure the histogram highlights are all the way to right at 255 and bring the mid-tones down, but I just cant get any tones in the whites / light highlights.

I get pretty good results if I photograph the paintings, but it's such a hassle to set up lights and camera that I prefer to scan.

Any other tricks I can use to successfully scan these?

[LSI_Ketelhohn]

Dear customer,

It probably is necessary to see the image to estimate what kind of difficulties you have.
If you do not want to post it here I can open a support case for you.

Kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.

[lnicolemac]

This is a segment of a painting I tried to scan. I brought the contrast all the way down trying to keep some highlights and of course in the histogram I've kept the highlight slider all the way to the right. It completely blows out where there is white. The original has good detail in these areas. It's even worse if the painting has more white. I've circled a few areas. I would really love to figure out a way to scan these. Appreciate your help.

[LSI_Ketelhohn]

Dear customer,

What kind of paper and paint is used?
Might those be reflections?
e.g. from an oil based paint?

Kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.

[lnicolemac]

I'm using acrylic paint on acrylic fine art paper. Here's another example where there is more paint. It could certainly be reflections - but it's frustrating that I just cannot scan things that are mostly white. To the eye, there is a lot of detail in the paint strokes.

[LSI_Ketelhohn]

How do you set the highlights and shadows?
Maybe manually adjusting the highlights/shadows in the Histogram would give you the amount of control over the white/black points you need?

You can also drag the histogram from the dialog bar and stretch it for finer adjustment.

Otherwise you could also give us a call and I or one of my colleagues can take a look at your settings through TeamViewer (www.TeamViewer.com).

Kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.