Hey all,
This is a little trick I like do in PhotoShop. I hope it helps someone. ...I love the quality and look of my pencil drawings better than my inks, but I was never able to manipulate the pencil line once it was inked the way you could with a digital ink line.
For instance, if I wanted to color a part of the line, rather than keep it all black, I couldn't do it in way that wasn't all pixilated. But, I found a way a few years ago, so I thought I'd share. Here goes-
1- First, scan you drawing into PhotoShop. Then go to "Image/Adjustments/Brightness-Contrast" until the paper is as white as you can get it, and the line as dark. (But, so it still looks like a pencil line. Not so it is all pixilated.)
2- Then, select your "Background Erasure" tool, and select these settings:
3- Next, select the color of the darkest part of your drawing.
4- Now, WHILE HOLDING THE CLICK FOR THE ENTIRE TIME, start on the white of the "paper" and drag over the ENTIRE image. Again, all in one click.
What happens is that all the white is sucked away, and all the grays and blacks of the pencil drawing remain.
5- Now if you lock the pixels on that layer you can color the pencil line any color you want AND retain all the great little variations, and subtleties that make pencil drawings so great!
This was a HUGE discovery for me.
Hope that helps someone out there.
Be well, all. God bless.
Replies
Oh, by the way...
I should add that this works best if your pencil/illustration is scanned in as a grayscale image.
Okay... that's all.
:-)
Amazing -- it was right there in front of me! Thanks much for sharing, Steve -- this is cool stuff.
Baruch BaShem!
Steve Crespo said:
Christopher,
Yeah, this was more of a whim type thing.
A genius? Nope, just someone whose been working in PhotoShop every day for about 12 years straight.
So, if you have any questions just give a shout!
You are a genius. I'm learning Photoshop as we speak, and I'm so excited. Right now I'm working on a children's book for a client, but when I finish, I'm going back to my comic and I'm a definitely try this. Do you have a list of tutorials or was this done on a whim.? Because this was very interesting. By the way did I mention your a genius?
Lee,
To lock pixels in the layer you are working in, just click the first "Lock" button. I highlighted it for ya from a file I'm working on.
The first button locks the pixels so you can't add or take away from the drawing. The second (the little brush) locks the color so you can't change colors. The third locks the position so nothing can be moved. And the fourth just completely locks the whole thing down so all you're allowed to do is sit and stare at it.
I love these options, because I'm ALWAYS coloring or drawing on the wrong layer when I'm working fast.
Shalom!
First, thanks Dremond, for bringing this to the fore again -- I missed it the first time around.
Second, pretty cool tutorial, Steve. Thanks so much for sharing it. It explains some things I've wrestled with. anytime I've wanted to preserve grays (whether pencils or half-tones or variations in ink density), I've resorted to creating a diffusion dither bitmap. This actually preserves the gray pixels -- look forward to playing around with it.
And third, I have a question if you've got a moment; how do I "lock pixels"?
Thanks again.
Yours in Messiah,
Lee
This is Awesome -- Thank You!
- Dremond