Two Questions I've Had for a Really Long Time
By
DerektheAwesome,
Posted on: 2007-09-15 15:12 in Multi-Media Fan Creations
BAS what program are you using specifically? Also what's the make of your scanner... I usually use photoshop to turn a light scan into a cleaner darker one, but sometimes setting the scanner's choice of what your scanning makes a difference in the actual end scan.
That is to say most distinguish what you are scanning as either grayscale, black and white, photo and or color. If you have a light image to begin with your scanner will often lighten it even more. So it's good to use a darker pencil line to begin with...
Your first question depends on your scanner. Mine has an option to Restore Photograph, which darkens it to the same shade as on paper. You can also go into Photoshop and use curves to darken a sketch (sorry, I only use Photoshop...I don't know the equivalent in other programs)
For the second question, I rarely ink by hand any more, because I prefer the clean lines from digitally inking with the pathing tools. But when I did ink by hand, there's a handy little plugin, Mack's Remove White , that removes the white and leaves only the black. (I generally run my inked image through Adobe Streamline first to smooth the lines, then pop it into Photoshop and use Mack's on it)
I know there are other ways of going about it, but that's the way I do it. Hope it helps 
Art (NSFW)
Photography
For coloring, set the "inked" layer as multiply in layer mode, then when you color the layer underneath, it'll show through the white
My scanner is an HP Scanjet 3500 C and I use the Control Panel/Scanners and Printers/Click on Icon way of scanning, if that makes a difference.
Thanks for the link, Darque.. I have Photoshop Elements 3.0, so I don't have the pathing tools or 'curves'.. At least I don't think so. Whenever I ink, it takes FOREVER, and the lines are usually pretty squiggly, so I'm thinking about just hand inking everything.
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BAS, we need to know what software you use to edit your images. (Edit: Answered while I was typing) That more than anything will determine what you need to do to get what you're after.
Some basics that I've been taught over time by my various photoshop teachers:
Scan as much as you can into the file. Bitmaps are not vector art and once you lose data on the bitmap upon scanning, it's gone forever. You want as much crud and dirt and garbage on the screen as is on your original drawing. This seems like backwards thinking, but this gives us the most data possible. Once we have this overload of data, we can manually go into the drawing and remove what we want. Lack of data leads to bleaching of the picture and the severely jagged lines on the artwork due to the lack of subtle gradients in the lines themselves.
The graph that people talk about in the contrast manipulation is called the Histogram. It's available in some programs, notably in photoshop under the "Levels" option. This is by far a more powerful and precise tool than the simple Contrast tool, as it allows you to pick your extreme black and white points manually. Not every drawing is the same. If I gave you some numbers to plug into the dialog box, they would not be the same from picture to picture. You'd likely wind up with some pics that have good data destroyed and can no longer achieve their potential.
For color work if you have photoshop, do them underneath the inks as you've been taught. The Ink layer itself should be the top layer for basic coloring, and that Ink layer should be set to "Multiply." This will make anything with white in it, become transparent in effect. This also includes gradients, as grays will allow some transparency and full whites will allow total transparency. In effect, the blending mode is a layer mask.
"Screen" actually does the complete opposite. Any parts that are black will be considered transparent instead of the whites. This is how you use things like lens flares and noise masks to their full effect. A totally black layer with a simple lens flare, set to "Screen" will only show the white flare and nothing of the black at all. You can then colorize the flare and move it around over the other layers as much as you like without worry.
(Edit: Scanning advice
When you scan art, scan it as high as your computer will comfortably allow. 300 dpi is the base starting point and is print quality. We want all our backups of art to be high resolution, should we ever need to go back to them for some reason. It's also handy should we ever want to print them out.
Turn off ALL automatic effects on the scanning software. These options are hidden a lot of the time, but go through your menus and anytime you see it doing something to your scan, disable it. No sharpening, no contrast effects, no gamma correction, no color correction. Nothing. We want the pure raw data of what you've scanned. You're much smarter than the computer is at deciding what looks good, so why let it even touch your art?
Cropping the pic is okay, though I prefer to crop the art myself. My scans are always set to scan the full art page and then I manually go in and crop to my needs.
http://www.virtueverse.net/wiki/Massacre_Melanie -the original Fire/Dark Corruptor -
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=115217
The Guide to BURN
Thanks so much for the post, Suich.. I'm gonna' reference it as I rescan a pic 
About the automatic options and disabling them in the menus.. I'm not getting any menus, besides a little thing that asks if its a 'Color' 'Grayscale' 'Black and White/Text' or 'Custom'. I always pick 'Custom' because that allows me to change brightness, dpi, and contrast.
Scarf_Girl�s Official Kid Brother!
Each time I scan, I have to adjust My new scanner works slightly better at catching color than my old one, but its interface is specific to that brand of scanner so I can't use the same old scan wizard 
I highly recommend inking by hand, BAS. I'm not a fan of cheater inks, most folks shouldn't go straight from pencil to color, and most of those that do tend to have stuff that looks very unfinished to me. (I'm so old school, I know. But inking LOOKS BETTER than uninked work, no matter what I've seen done professionally - or even in spite of things, because I've seen a lot of pro work that looks so sloppy...)
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
Repurposed
Unless you have awesome pencil skillz like me. *flexes* /egomaniac
http://www.virtueverse.net/wiki/Massacre_Melanie -the original Fire/Dark Corruptor -
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=115217
The Guide to BURN
[ QUOTE ]
Unless you have awesome pencil skillz like me. *flexes* /egomaniac
[/ QUOTE ]
*Stares at pencil-skill-muscles in amazement* *Drool*
>_> In other news, I've inked (by hand) my High Tyde piece, and I must say, he is looking almost as sexy as me - And I don't even have to have a really low cut top 
Anywho, I'll scan it soon.. I can't wait to try and make it look all perty before adding colors!
Scarf_Girl�s Official Kid Brother!
[ QUOTE ]
Unless you have awesome pencil skillz like me. *flexes* /egomaniac
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Hee. There are probably about 5 percent of the people I watch on DA that could possibly even pull it off. Most of the *professionals* that I dealt with when I ran my comic store couldn't. Myself, I am a huge fan of really crisp, really sharp pencils AND inks - I do all my inking with a plain old sharpie (fine) or good ballpoint but I used to use extremely expensive rapidographs. And then I had to clean my .13, and gave up on that.
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
Repurposed
Thanks for the responses guys I wanted to see what my new histogram could do, so I scanned the inked High Tyde piece w/o erasing the pencils that I traced, and it almost got rid of them all (And my pencil lines are really thick in some places) So I'm gonna' erase them, scan it again, and it should come out real nice
Oh, and if you wanna' see an artist that does no inks: Magespages.deviantart.com
Scarf_Girl�s Official Kid Brother!
If you ink by hand, it should work to put the color layers ABOVE the original picture, and set them to multiply.
Here is the coloring WIP for High Tyde. This is inked by hand, then scanned into the computer. I then adjusted the levels with the Histogram-mabobber and then added color I'm really happy with how this is turning out, though its gonna' be hell trying to get the lighting right with the glowing 'ribbon' on his costume. Notice that this is only at 15% magnification The file is huge.. I usually color at about 150% mag, but for this, I only used 50% 
Comments and constructive criticism, please! Thanks!!!
Scarf_Girl�s Official Kid Brother!
Looks great BAS!
Thanks LJ! It means more than you know
Scarf_Girl�s Official Kid Brother!
love the way the color came out.
Thanks a lot
Scarf_Girl�s Official Kid Brother!
Wow that's turning out really good! *waits at DA for the finished product*
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
Repurposed
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Wow that's turning out really good! *waits at DA for the finished product*
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Hehe, thanks!
Scarf_Girl�s Official Kid Brother!
I have two questions about my artwork:
Thanks!
1) When scanning a picture, they come out really light. I've heard that there is a way to change the contrast and brightness to really darken the lines, as well as keep the white of the page bright. Does anyone know two numbers for the two settings that work well? People have talked about how it should look on graphs, but when I get the option to change it, I just get two sliders with numbers from like -100 to 100, or something like that.
2) When people ink by hand, how do they color? I've always learned to color on a layer under the inks, but if I do that, then it gets hidden by the white that also gets scanned. I've tried using the Magic Eraser and Magic Wand tool, but there are always little corners and crannies that stay white, and I can't get to without damaging the surrounding line art, by making it real transparent. There was something I did on the Derek Fayte mini that made it work out well, but it was by accident and don't know how to reproduce it
So could anyone help me with these two questions? I would be very thankful
Scarf_Girl�s Official Kid Brother!