how would you get dark lines on drawings in photoshop?

Question

this for example: http://www.creaturesinmyhead.com/creatures/042207-itsmore.gif

say i drew that, when i put it into photoshop, obviously, the pencil or pen or sharpee [whatever] i use isnt as dark as like #000000 black. and with the look of that, the coloring was definatly done in photoshop. but if i go over my lines in black with photoshop, it looks alot less smooth, and alot crappier. if i try to make the lines really dark prior to uploading the picture into photoshop, the quality of the drawing goes down, and if i use paintbucket to fill in the lines i drew with black, it doesnt look good at all. so my question is how would i go about getting lines to look like that, rather than faded or crappy?

Answer 1

Its a question of contrast. You need to have higher contrast in black, mostly affecting the dark tones, without affecting other colors. The best tool for doing it good is not contrast but curves. It will be better if you have your image either in grayscale or in CMYK so you can work by adjusting only the black. If you don't know how curves works it is better to look on the help of photoshop. If I try to explain with no images I 'll just confuse you.

Another way is to use the "unsharp mask" filter. Again the help will be better than my explanation but I suggest you try the values 500, 1, 255.

You can also use both things. If you try it a couple of times you'll see its quite easy and does very good work.

Answer 2

I would suggest if you want a crisp black line, first go and open other software like the Freehand or Illustrator and draw an out line with the vector pen tool and then bring it into Photoshop that way you will get a very clean crsip outline of the art that you are creating.

Make sure you rasterize the line layer in photoshop so that later on you can make slight changes to it so that it would look more organic, then a hard vector line.



Hope this helps.

http://www.rabyoungdesign.com

Answer 3

The pen tool.



Vector images made using the pen tool in Photoshop or Illustrator are much smoother and cleaner than drawing with the brush tool. I find Illustrator a lot easier to work with for vectors, but Photoshop will do the job if it's all you have. I would guess that image was probably done in Illustrator, although it could have been done in Photoshop as well.



It's not the easiest thing to master but it'll give you the results you're looking for. I'd suggest searching for some tutorials on making vectors, try http://good-tutorials.com .

Answer 4

Agreed with what dimitris said, but actually there are other ways.



1. Scanning stage, set it to grayscale and raise the contrast.



2. In Photoshop:

a. Beside "Curve", "Level" can also be applied. Choose one.

b. Use path tool. Go to "Palette" tool and make a new path. Trace your drawing, and stroke the completed path (make sure your foreground color is black) with anything you want (pen, pencil, brush, etc.)



Just remember to change the color mode to RGB when you start the coloring process.

Answer 5

Are you scanning as bitmap or as greyscale? I would try a greyscale scan and use the brightness and contrast. An alternative might be to draw your original at 200% – which is what a lot of comic book illustrators do.

Answer 6

Hi

This article helped me quite a lot and also pointed me in the direction.



Hope this helps.

Answer 7

did you try using the magic wand to select it all and then go over it with the black paintbrush tool?