How Do I Smooth Out A Line Drawing In Photoshop

Preview

Click the image beneath to see it in total size.

Step i: Scanning Your Inks

In this tutorial, I'one thousand going to use my ain illustration. Feel free to utilise your ain illustration or use the source file provided at the cease of the tutorial to follow forth. Brand sure y'all are scanning in black and white.

This ensures that yous accept solid blackness lines with no soft edges. This is of import as nosotros will exist isolating the line art onto its own layer — information technology'due south much easier to do this when the line art is clean and solid.

Stride 2: Isolating the Line Fine art

At present that nosotros have our epitome scanned, open it in Adobe Photoshop. We want to separate the inks onto their own layers for more command. To do this, nosotros want to select the white groundwork and delete information technology.

Press Ctrl/Cmd + Alt/Selection + 2 (for Photoshop CS4 and up) or Ctrl/Cmd + Alt/Option + ~ (for Photoshop CS3 and below). This command places a option around all the calorie-free-colored areas of the layer. Tip: I encourage you to know and utilise Photoshop shortcut keys; it saves a lot of time.

Then printing Delete to remove the selected white areas, leaving us with just the line art on this layer. Create a new layer (Shift + Ctrl/Cmd + N). Use Edit > Fill (Shift + F5) to fill the entire layer with white.

Move this layer below the line art layer. Lock this layer. We won't need to exercise anything to it anymore.

Footstep 3: Clean Up Inks

Information technology'south ever a proficient practice to erase as much of your pencil lines before y'all scan in your inks. It lessens the piece of work subsequently in the digital phase. But even so, we'll ofttimes yet need to make clean up our inks digitally.

Let's practice some tidying up! With the inks on their own layer, run through them with the Eraser Tool (E) to become rid of whatsoever unwanted marks.

Step 4: Flats

Flatting (or flats) is blocking in color that serves equally placeholders. Flats are not your final colors; instead, they help you gain control to brand coloring and rendering efficient. The term comes from the coloring specialist, Flatter, in the comic industry.

Permit's start by creating a new layer underneath our line art layer. Next, grab the Lasso Tool (L) and make certain that the Anti-alias selection in the Options Bar is non checked. Commencement tracing the line-work with the Lasso Tool and filling (Shift + F5) the Lasso selections with whatever color you want.

The completed flat for the confront should expect something like this: Yous will continue this process until you take all the areas covered. In short, whatsoever area you want to color is going to have a unlike color flat. It doesn't matter which colors you use in this stage, so long equally the aforementioned colors don't affect.

Your final flats should look something similar this: This can be a long and irksome process, just the hr and a half you spend flatting could hands translate into saving 3 hours in the final coloring stages.

Step 5: Coloring

At present that the flats are finished, nosotros need to lock the layer. This is where you starting time making choices and experimenting, considering it'south time to colour! You should take your flats layer locked.

Now, grab your Magic Wand Tool (Westward), brand certain to take the Tolerance option set to 0, Anti-alias option unchecked and Contiguous option unchecked (this can all be done in the Options bar). Use the Magic Wand Tool to select the unlike colors on your flats layer and filling (Shift + F5) your colors on the new layer to a higher place it. I'm going for a purple-ish overall tone with a yellow/green background, merely I may decide to change it to a ruddy, a green, or even a yellow tone downwards the road.

Since I can go dorsum to my flats layer and grab anything I desire, everything can be changed or fixed. This is one major advantages of flatting. For now, I'm going to stick with the colors shown beneath.

Step 6: Rendering

Here'southward another stage where the choices are yours. You could only leave these colors flat, or you could brand a custom brush and start painting. For this slice, I will go with a basic cel-shading style — blueish shadow on everything.

I'thousand doing this, because I know I'm going to be playing around with a lot of watercolor textures later, and I don't want an overly rendered look. Then with the Magic Wand Tool (West), let's catch all the areas of the Hunter and his Horse. Option a prissy bluish shade color, and start coloring where y'all desire your shadows.

I did this on a single layer to minimize the number of layers I end upward with as well as using as little car power to foreclose crash or lag. Here is the result: Now nosotros are going to create a new layer on elevation of the shadows layer to add some gradients to the background and the shield. Apply the Magic Wand Tool (W) to select the background.

Once selected, apply the Gradient Tool (Thousand), setting information technology to Linear Gradient and choosing the Foreground to Transparent preset in the Options bar.

Footstep 7: Textures

I scanned in various watercolor textures that I made. (If yous are following along with the provided source file at the bottom of this tutorial, they are included in the layers.) If you are scanning in your ain textures in Photoshop, switch to the Move Tool (Five), Shift-click on the scanned-in texture and and then drag it over into our main document. (A possible selection is to employ the Watercolor Textures: Photoshop Brush Pack instead.) Information technology'll expect something like this: Now nosotros only want this texture to bear upon the Hunter.

In other words, we want to delete the texture off the Horse and the background. This is besides where flatting becomes quite helpful. Allow's become back to the flats layer, use the Magic Wand Tool (Westward) to select the background and the horse, and so printing Delete.

Now our texture is only affecting our Hunter and a bit of his saddle. To add more depth, let'south tweak the layer'due south Blend Mode and Opacity. There are many absurd furnishings in the different layer modes, only for this tutorial, we will utilise the Overlay mode.

This is i of my favorites when working with textures. Select the texture layer, set it to Overlay. Next, lower the texture layer's Opacity to lessen the intensity — drop the dial back to almost 63%.

Feel gratuitous to experiment. This is the about basic fashion to deal with textures. Using this method, I dragged over a few more textures into the piece and isolated them to certain areas using our flats.

I ended up with this: Using the method above, consummate your textures.

Footstep 8: Adjustment Layers – The Finishing Touch

The illustration is nearly consummate, but information technology needs a fiddling refinement. This is when I usually outset playing around with adjustment layers. These are great because yous can get many different effects without irresolute the pixels of your prototype.

I desire to add a little color in the line art. The stark black of the line art stands out from the muted palette. Let's tone it down.

Click on the inks layer to make information technology the active layer, and then click on the Create new fill or adjustment layer icon (it looks like a black and white pie) at the lesser of your Layers panel, so cull Solid Colour. Since information technology has a lot of royal, I desire the inks to fit in instead of standing out. I'm going to select a majestic color.

The entire layer should be filled with the color you have selected. In this instance, imperial. Essentially the adjustment layer is affecting everything below it, merely we only desire to affect the layer directly below it (the inks layer).

So correct-click on the Solid Color adjustment layer and and then choose Create Clipping Mask from the card. The result should await like the following: However, the outcome seems likewise vivid nevertheless. Lower the Opacity of the adjustment layer to about 33%.

Step 9: Flatten the Paradigm

This all looks good to me at this indicate, and I'yard going to call information technology washed! To finish up, allow'due south flatten the image. Correct-click on any layer and choose Flatten Prototype from the menu that appears.

You tin also do this from the Photoshop menu past going to Layer > Flatten Image. Catechumen the image from RGB to CMYK for impress by choosing Epitome > Mode > CMYK Color.

Tutorial Summary

That's it! I hope yous picked up something interesting in this coloring tutorial. I talked about several techniques such every bit cleaning up inks, creating flats, adding textures and using adjustment layers.

For inspiration, check out the portfolio sites of these digital colorists: