One issue that always occurred when I was doing my art was a lack of good quality free programs which still lingers to this day. Through practice and a lot of effort I have gathered a number of programs (including photoshop and mangastudio)to help me get by.
But if you're one of the individuals that has very little money I can always link up to a few free programs before we get started.
Two that I always use are:
Paint.net: I use this mainly to get chat boxes up since the photoshop program I use does not have this aspect for some reason or another. It has a few basic tools that can be used and that's about it.
MyPaint: I got this online and it's pretty much SAI but free. It takes a lot of practice to figure out the small things such as how to move across the screen because there are no scroll bars (you use the arrow keys) but it has a number of brushes, painting styles and can blur much better than photoshop.
Anyhow, if you decide to scan in your work or photograph it (make sure that there is plenty of light when photographing) in most cases the image won't come out very strong. In this case, it's best to upload the picture onto your chosen program and go into the adjustment section. Almost all programs have this so it should be no hassle.
Go into the contrast section (the levels can be used as well but contrast is generally more effective) and move it up until the line work clearly stands out from the background. This will allow for viewers to see the image better or you to fill in the line work better (unless it's a coloured image, which is when levels is best recommended).
When taking a photo, the image is often slightly lopsided as well. You can crop most images in most programs, but in some cases you cannot tilt the image. I use photoshop for things such as this, but I think that MyPaint can also tilt an image.
Anyhow, select the whole image, turning it so that it is at the proper angle with the move tool, then expand it so that some of the edges are less visible. If necessary, crop the image so that the main image stands out the most; then go about using the contrast tool and so forth like you do with scanned images.
This is just a basic tutorial to get people started. Next time there will be images involved in how to colour scanned images after they've been contrasted. As a note, a drawing tablet will be used.
