Muddy Scanned Ink Lines

Muddy Scanned Ink Lines in Adobe Photoshop — with a ready prompt for the moment it comes up. 1 real situation leads here.

1prompt height
1situation
1role does it
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The moments that lead here

If one of these is your afternoon, you are in the right place.

I scanned a client’s ink line drawing and the strokes look muddy; they want me to paint on top but expect crisp lines in the final by tomorrow morning. This is my first time cleaning a detailed hatch drawing solo and I'm nervous I'll erase character in the lines.

1 ready prompt

Written for the moment this actually comes up.

Decide — diagnose the stuck moment

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I'm about to clean a scanned ink drawing so the strokes are crisp for painting over. Diagnose the…
I'm about to clean a scanned ink drawing so the strokes are crisp for painting over. Diagnose the fastest safe approach that preserves line character: levels/curves threshold, selective dodge/burn, or manual inking? Tell me which to try first, one adjustment value to start with, and one thing I must not do because it will lose the original hand.

Who does this, and with what

The same task is different work inside a different job.

Illustrator / Digital ArtistAdobe Photoshop

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Every task here came from the work, not from a feature list — which is why the prompts name what you want done and never the button that does it. The tool changes; the work does not.
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Same library, five ways in.