LineartI've been wondering what the most lazy way of colouring while preserving the lineart cleanly (without the annoying white pixels) with Photoshop is. This is my current theory:
1. Clean up the lineart: Scan it at high-res (200-300dpi), then mess with the brightness/contrast so that the lineart is as black as possible without losing detail, and the paper is white. It depends on your scanner's settings, but putting the contrast up +25 and brightness up +15 is a fine starting point.
2. Make a background layer below the lineart layer.
3. Set the lineart layer to 'multiply'. Use the magic wand on the lineart to select the area you want, then Select-->Expand by a couple pixels (depending on the thickness of your lines. Basically, you don't want the selection to go outside the lines, but anywhere inside is fine).
4. Select the background layer so you're editing that, and use the paintbucket tool to colour it. Assuming I understand Photoshop, it should colour under the lineart and look all pretty.
Anyone know a better method?
Another Tablet PC UpdateNovember. Meanwhile, Apple has released some damn nice MacBook Pros. I don't think I'll buy one until a 17" model is released. And I may even wait until the Mac tablet, should it come into existence.
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I thought about getting one sometime.
Ah well. I bet Apple released one when I have enough money to afford it. XD
I might be getting an iPod Touch, too. ^o^ Now there's a sexy piece of technology.
I don't think using the magic wand tool and then filling the background layer is a good idea, because you're then losing line thickness and details of the lines.
The good thing about using a different layer for each colour is that you can easily go back and make hue/brightness alterations later, and also clean up the edges for each coloured layer using layer masks.
An option that seems more pleasing and easier to do to me is vectoring each coloured layer. I grabbed a sketch of spiderman off of google images and made this gif to show you how I would build up the colour using vectors: (each frame shows for 5 seconds)
[link]
So..
frame 1 is just the linework,
frame 2 is the red colour done with vector shapes,
frame 3 is the red + blue vector shapes,
frame 4 is the details that I previously overlapped - in this case his eyes, because they need to be white,
frame 5 is just showing you the vector shapes without the linework.
You wouldn't be, because it would be colouring under it and the lineart layer would be set to multiply, so all of the colour that's lighter than the lineart will show through.
I agree that using a different layer for each colour is often useful, but my method can incorporate that too.
Vectoring lineart is good, but unless you have an application that can auto-vector lines (which afaik Photoshop can't), then it's a LOT more work than my method.
Vectoring colour is fine and consistent with my method (assuming you can vector selections, which I haven't tried but I'd be very surprised if you can't). I think I'll try that next time. But it seems like you traced around the figure to do the vector? In a detailed picture like that, drawing around it does indeed look faster than paint-bucketing all those bits of web (though it may be faster/easier to do it with the magic wand selection tool) -- but I was referring to more simple cartoony/anime images where it would be faster just to bucket than draw around it.
PS: Nice gif. ^^ Saved for reference.
If you build up the vector layers with solid colour (with normal blending modes) you could do the line art manually, though then your whole picture would be a vector and would lack any of the original line art.
I imagine paint bucket is better for large shapes, but I was just presenting vector as a nice alternative, as I always associate using the paint bucket with mspaint! D:
Glad you liked the gif
Doing the lineart manually with vectors may look nice, but it's much more effort and time (especially with complicated pictures). If you scan at a high enough resolution and the lineart is reasonably clean, it shouldn't look *that* different.
Heh, I've never really used MSpaint -- though I do remember the paint bucket tool in KidPix.