Photoshop Line Art Tutorial
Last Updated (Tuesday, May 05 2009)
This tutorial will cover the technique I use to scan, clean and isolate my line work in Photoshop. It is the process I use for almost all of my pieces and it is a combination of techniques I have learned from many resources on the internet.
I find it important for an artist to learn the keyboard shortcuts to Photoshop as it speeds up the process, so I will be using them in this tutorial. Here is a great place to download a PDF with all of the shortcuts in Photoshop.
Let's get to it.
Scanning your Lines
When you scan your lines you want to have a pretty high resolution to work with. I scan at 300dpi or higher. This gives me a high enough resolution so that I can get all the details in the image nice and sharp. You also don't want to scan too high as that will create a very big file and can take up tons of your computers resources. I personally wouldn't go higher than about 600dpi for images with tons of tiny details in them. Set it to scan in grayscale then scan your image and save it.
Clean Up
This is a very important part of the process, so you want to take your time and make sure things look good here.
After your image has been scanned, hit CTRL-L to bring up the Levels. Grab the black slider all the way to the left. Slide it a bit to the right so that the darks in the image get even darker, then click OK. This will darken alot of the junk that may be on the page and make it a lot easier to take them out.
Click on the Brush tool
. We want to make sure that the foreground color is White and the background color is Black.
With the foreground color selected, start painting over anything that you don't want in the image.
If the dark areas have alot of white spots and you want to fill them in, hit "X" on your keyboard. This will switch to your Background color (black) and paint over the white spots.
Continue cleaning up your image hitting "X" to switch back and forth between your Black and White until it's nice and clean.
I often leave some texture in my lines, as I feel it adds an interesting aspect to them but that personal taste.
Hit CTRL-S to Save!
It's good practice to save this as a separate file than your original scan in case you want to back and start over or tweak the image a bit.
Line Isolation
Now that our lines are nice and clean (or as clean as you want them) lets get them ready for colors. There are two ways that I know to do this but I will stick to the one that I find most effective.
Double click on the Background layer.
This will bring up dialog with a few options in it. Name the layer "Line Art" then click Ok. This also unlocks the layer, which we will also need for the next step.
Next, hit CTRL-A to select your entire image. Follow that up with CTRL-C to copy your selection.
Now click on your Channels Tab to bring up your channel layers and click on the Create New Channel button at the bottom of the Channels Tab.
Click on the Alpha Layer then hit CTRL-V to paste your selection into the Alpha Channel.
Here you must hold down CTRL while you click inside of the thumbnail of your image in the Channels layer. This will select only your lines.
While the lines are still selected, switch back to your Layers by clicking on the Layers Tab.
Select the Line Art layer and hit DELETE. This clears all of the white and leaves you with just the lines.
Hit CTRL-L to bring your Levels up again. Again move the Black slider (the one all the way to the left) and slide it to the right all the way and under the white slider then click OK. This gets rid of all of the excess white around your lines and leaves us with nice clean lines to work with.
Save as a new file!
Convert your image to RGB, by going to Image>Mode>RGB.
Now your lines are isolated and you can begin coloring in a different layer.
Conclusion
From here you can create a new layer under the Line Art and color to your heart's desire without the lines being affected. You can even lock this layer so that you don't move it by mistake by clicking on the lock above layers in your Layers Tab.
Remember to always, always, always save your work as you progress. Even better practice is to save different instances of your file. Also, use the layers! Color each different element in a different layer and even group layers together. These features will make your life easier. In addition, don't forget to name your layers as you create them. You don't want to be stuck trying to figure out what was colored in what layer.
Thanks for reading the tutorial. Leave a comment below if it helped you in anyway or if you know of other techniques that can help someone out.
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