Often when I go out and about on public transportation I take index cards and drawing utensils with me. Until this week, though, whatever I drew doing that that found its way to a blog post was first photographed by my smartphone, then photoedited with the smartphone software.

Now I have more freedom. A week ago I took advantage of a going-out-of-business sale to buy a color laser printer. Like all such printers nowadays, this one has scan capability. I’ve hooked it up to my laptop and am now able to scan what I draw on its scanning bed. So today I took a few of my drawings made on my jaunts and montaged them.

Once scanned, I am able to use Microsoft Photo Editor, the photoediting software that came with the operating system that came with my laptop, to crop, rotate, adjust color levels, and–by far the tool I use most of all–adjust brightness and contrast. “Adjust midtone levels only” is my bread and butter for helping my little drawings pack the punch they do.

I will still be using my smartphone. It enables me to capture images on the fly, anywhere, and post them in real time. But the ‘flavor’ of my images will be different with this new capability, and I’m hoping 2019 will see better presentation of images and the content behind them.