Photoshop Scanning and Colouring Tutorial

Funk — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:09:20 +0000

This is (hopefully) going to teach you how to scan in your picture and give it a cell-shade look in Photoshop. I’ll be using Photoshop version 6 in this – the principles explained should work in any version from 5 onwards (I don’t really colour any other way than this, so I don’t need a newer version). You can also use the tips given here for colouring even if you’ve digitally inked your picture. You should also be able to follow this without the use of a graphics tablet.

To use this tutorial, click on the thumbnails to see the full size images.

Step One: Pencilling and Inking

I sketch using coloured lead. The beauty of it is that you do not need to erase your pencil lines after you ink. Sometimes, depending on the paper and ink you use, the eraser can damage your ink or crease your paper. With blue lead, you don’t need to worry about any of that! Coloured lead can be bought from any good art store. Bag yourself a cheap mechanical pencil (the one I use cost me 50p), fit it with coloured lead and away you go!

Be as rough as you like with the sketching. I can’t tell you how to draw, but I find drawing lots and lots of lines helps – don’t treat the first line you draw as the final (that’s why you have a “pencil stage” to begin with). Once you are happy with your pencil drawing, start inking over it. I ink using a 0.05 Staedtler pigment pen, though it’s always better for you to try out different ones until you find one you like.

Step Two: Scanning

The scanner set up

Open Photoshop. Go to File > Import > *insert your scanner name here*. When your scanner window pops up (ignore the fact that mine is in German – I lost the English installation disk), press “preview” (your scanner window will probably look different from mine and in this case, where is says “Vorschau” it means “Preview”). Select your image. Now, make sure that the dpi (dots per inch) is set to a minimum of 600. Then hit scan and wait for your image to upload into Photoshop!

Step Three: Cleaning the Scan

Your image before cleaning

When your image opens in Photoshop it will be huge, but don’t panic! That just means your lines will look cleaner, especially if you decide to print your art once you’re finished. For now though, we have to get rid of the blue sketch lines!

Using the Threshold feature.

First, zoom in until you are viewing your picture at about 50%. Then go to Image > Adjust > Threshold. Make sure “Preview” is selected. The lines will suddenly look pixellated and pretty awful, but don’t be put off! Play about with the arrow on the line, the more to the right the thicker your lines will look, the more to the left, the thinner they will be. When you’re happy, hit “OK”. What you want is clean, pixellated lines.

After you have put your image through the threshold, select the Pencil Tool (if you can’t find it, hold in the Paintbrush Tool and a little pop-out will appear with a pencil symbol in it). Now, you have to go around the full image tidying it up. Sometimes, if you leaned a little heavy with the blue lead pencil lines, it will leave little rough looking areas (that show up as solid black pixels in places where you did not ink). Simply use the eraser tool set on pencil to get rid of them! To set the eraser to pencil, simply go to the drop-down box on the top task bar when you have the eraser tool selected.

Cleaning up your lineart

Another problem that may occur when you’re looking at your scan is that some parts of the lineart are “broken”. You won’t be able to colour your picutre properly if you have open sections in your lineart, so just go to the pencil tool (hold in the paintbrush tool until the pencil pops out and you can select it) and change it to a nice thin width. Then, draw in the missing areas (it might take a while to do if you don’t have a graphics tablet, but it’s essential).

When you’re happy with your lineart, it’s time to go to the next stage.

Stage Four: Setting Up Layers and Block Colouring

Layer Set Up

Select the magic wand tool. Make sure all three options for it on the task bar are unchecked and then hit a piece of your lineart. Your lineart should be selected within the “marching ants”. Press crtl+x and this will cut your lineart. Then press ctrl+v and it will paste it onto a new layer. Right click this new layer in the layers window and name it “lineart”. Then, select your original background layer. Go to the swatches window and pick out a colour that will not appear in your finished image (in this case, a delicious bile-green was chosen) and fill the background (press crtl+backspace and it will automatically flood-fill your selected layer with the colour you’ve set to the background pallete).

Since this is such a basic image, there isn’t a lot to this section. Just go to your swatches and pick out a nice skin tone. Make a new layer beneath the lineart (press ctrl+shift+n to make a new layer) and call it “block colour”. Use the paintbucket to fill the areas you want (make sure “Contigous” and “All Layers” are selected). With some pictures, your skin colour will flood into the eyes. Just use the eraser to get rid of any spills. Also, sometimes you might find that part of the lineart within your character’s main outline is not closed. Just go the pencil tool and fill it in as you go along.

Stage Five: Creating A Mask

The Mask Layer

Now, here comes the nifty part (and the reason we had to have “closed” lineart)! Go back to your “lineart” layer and with the magic wand still selected, now check the box at the top that says “Contigous”. This will select the area outside what we want to colour. If you then press ctrl+shift+i then it will select the entire area inside your figure. When you have done this, make a new layer and call it “mask01″ or whatever you want. This is the layer that your mask is going to sit on. To make the mask, simply go to your layer window and drag the new layer down below your lineart. Then, press the symbol next to the “f” on the bottom of the layer window (highlighted). There! Your mask has been created! So, if you go to the mask layer and lets say you select bright pink, the colour can only ever go to the edge of your line art.

Stage Six: Shading

Shading On The Mask

Go to your swatches and pick a crazy colour that’s again, not going to be in your finished image. It should be a colour that you can easily see against your block colour (you can turn your block colour off, but I prefer to work with it on, especially when I’m colouring a character that has a lot of clothing). In this case, I’ve used a shocking pink. Now, with your colour chosen and your mask layer selected, start to shade your character! There really isn’t a right or wrong way to do it. Try to think about where the source of light is coming from. You can select areas with the lasso tool, the pen tool or just with the pencil. I like to chop and change between them all, depending on what part of the picture I’m trying to colour.

When you are happy with the shading, set your mask layer to “multiply” (drop-down on the layer window). When it’s on multiply, press ctrl+u to get the Hue/Saturation options to pop-up. Now, just play around with the arrows until you find a setting you like then press “OK” and you’re done!

Stage Six: Finishing and Tips

The Finished Thing

I’ve added another mask layer with more shading on it and a seperate normal layer with highlights. It’s up to you what you want to do once you’ve completed this basic colouring stage.

Having good lineart from the start makes the whole process a lot quicker and easier, as it cuts down on the time you have to spend fixing your art once you’ve scanned it in.

I hope you’ve found this tutorial easy to understand and use. If there are any problems with it, please leave a comment below and I’ll (at some point) get round to fixing it.

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Photoshop Scanning and Colouring Tutorial