PS Tutorial 3: Add color to lines

Tutorial for Scratchboard (scraper coated with white clay and black surface layer of the drawing board, with scraping to produce black and white line of the picture) illustrations add color, not only can retain the original image of the texture and contrast, but also for the image to increase vitality, make it more exciting. The following is the way to achieve this effect using Photoshop.

(Figure Final)

Tip: In this article, Command/ctrl refers to the Command key in the Macintosh system and the CTRL key in the Windows system, while Option/alt corresponds to the Option key and the ALT key for each of the two systems.

1. Convert the scanned art lines from bitmap format to bit gray format

In this example, the scanned original image is 14x17 inch, resolution 300ppi, bitmap format. Normal art lines require much higher resolution, but the irregular textures in this illustration do not lose image quality when printed with low resolution, so you can use a lower resolution.

(Figure Linart)

Converts an image to grayscale mode. This makes the image only a black-and-white pixel in both colors. Now you can use the Magic wand tool to make a transparent background layer.

2. Remove all white pixels with the magic wand tool

Now, let's erase all the white pixels in the image. So we can get a transparent layer with only black pixels. It's like making a film of this art line (the line of art on clear acetic acid salt).

First, select the Magic Wand tool, set the tolerance to 0 in the tool options, and make sure no click anti-aliasing, Continuous, and for any of the layers. Then click on the Magic wand to select all the white pixels in the image.

(Figure Removewhite)

Next, double-click the background layer in the layers panel to bring up the new Layer dialog box. Name the new layer "Lineart" and click OK. Press the DELETE key to remove all white pixels. Finally, cancel the selection with the Command/ctrl+d command.

(Figure Linetrans)

3. Create a color layer

Converts an image to RGB mode. Now you can add a layer of color above the line layer, or you can change the color of the black line.

Press Shift+command/ctrl+n to bring up the new Layer dialog box. Name the new layer "Color". Move this layer below the lineart layer. Now start drawing the color version of the art line on the new layer. The color will act on the image through the black line, so bright and strong colors may work better when drawing with a brush. Also, your eyes will be mixed with the color of the art line and the color below, but sometimes this can cause problems. For example, yellow seen through black lines can look like green, not brown.

(Figure BackgroundColor)

Experience: Keep the colors below bright.

4. Add other elements

In this example, under the Lineart layer, the image also joins the boundary and the sky layer. Boundaries are created in Photoshop, and the sky is scanned from an early black and white engraving.

(Figure Color2)

When you add a new art line painting like the sky, delete all the white pixels again, leaving only the black part of the picture. Then select to lock transparent pixels and fill the gradient for the line. Use the gradient tool to set the appropriate foreground and background colors, and then set the gradient to the previous color to the background color.

5. Convert to CMYK mode

The following figure is the example of the graph Layer panel case (figure layers). When you have finished all the coloring work, select the Flatten Layer command from the Layers Palette options menu. It is then converted to a CMYK mode suitable for printing. The final image is 14x17 inch size, 300ppi,cmyk mode, and is stored in TIFF file format.

(Figure layers)

Tip: Usually we store a copy of a layer that is not merged for future modifications.