What's the best way to scan a pencil sketch background?

[Cryxo]

Hi, currently I am working on a game that I am making with a friend of mine.
For me specifically, I am supossed doing the animations, backgrounds, and the arty stuff.

I have a Bamboo One tablet but I am terrible at the thing. So I am drawing all the detailed stuff and sketches with pencil and paper. However, I do not know much on how to get good enough scans, what properties etc... When I try, I get extremely faint lines.

Please help me and thanks in advance.

I know I suck 

[Ghost]

I usually scan at 300dpi and run the Auto adjust Brightness/Contrast of Photoshop. That's usually very dark, so I fine-tune it a little. One that's done you can scale down the image to whatever size you need, lower the resolution back to 100 or even 75dpi, and just work with it.

[Mantra of Doom]

The best results, I've found, is that after doing a pencil sketch, I'll go over the sketch with a very thin sharpie or pigma micron pen. Then I'll scan at 300 DPI and adjust the brightness/contrast setting until it looks okay.

If you have Adobe Illustrator (CS2 and higher) You can import the image over and use what is called Live Trace to get clean vectors of a scan. That can, then be tweaked to the desired result. The Live Trace used to be a stand-alone program called Streamline, but it achieved the same effect - clean lines from a scan.

[Cryxo]

Can I do all these things in programs like Paint.net?

I don't have that kind of money 

[TerranRich]

The GIMP does most of what Photoshop does, and it's free.

[zabnat]

Well scaling and brightness/contrast are some of the most basic functions of photoediting software, so you can use just about any program to do these things.

As for the vectors, I'm not sure if there are any free vectordrawing programs that would have a decent bitmap to vectors trace. Vector Magic is pretty good, but that's not free (you can try it free online though).

[Layabout]

Well scaling and brightness/contrast are some of the most basic functions of photoediting software, so you can use just about any program to do these things.

As for the vectors, I'm not sure if there are any free vectordrawing programs that would have a decent bitmap to vectors trace. Vector Magic is pretty good, but that's not free (you can try it free online though).

Inkscape is a free vectoring program.

But on to the topic, I really depends on the effect you are after.Try doing your drawings with a 2B pencil and perhaps go over the lines with a 4B to get the defined lines. I generally have not had much trouble when scanning...

[TerranRich]

Illustrator's bitmap-to-vector tool is pretty good and very accurate. It's called Live Trace within the program.