Mini tutorial 2 : Colouring your scans...

Philippe Jofresa · 2001-02-23T23:59:26

Well, here is a method I use to colour my drawings. It uses Photoshop, but it will/should work with any program that uses layers (gimp, Paint Shop Pro, etc). The first step is to get a picture to work on In this case I simply scanned in a wee drawing done in pencil in five minutes. Note that the method works BETTER when the drawing style is clearer. That is, shaded drawings is a bad idea (though I have an example where it actually worked fine). If you scan in a drawing be sure to use a large resolution. DONT scan too small. The bigger the better, you can always scale down later. Alternatively, you can use a mouse drawn picture. This is where the method actually works the best. Simply use the pencil tool or whatever equivalent, and draw away. Here is the original, unaltered, uncleaned version : First, I do a bit of cleaning up. Get rid of the inside of the lips for instance, or erase some messy lines. I also desaturated the picture, this is important for the rest of the operations, so dont forget that. We want to work with grayscale for the moment. I also increased the contrast to get pure black lines, rather than greyish. Here is the cleaned up version : Now we can start the filtering spree ! First, Gaussian Blur the picture. The amount is to your discretion, the idea is that you dont want to lose the shape of the drawing, but you need to "stretch" the lines, by blurring them, dont worry, it gets better after using ... ... the Adjust>Curves menu ! You need two control points really, the value you'll place them will basically make how dark and thick your lines will now be. The A part of the graph below is what becomes Black (because it's at the bottom), the B part is the anti-aliasing if you will, the more the slope is smooth, the more grey you get. Then the C part is what become White. Depending on where your B section occurs, you get thicker or thinner lines... again, mess around, it really depends on each drawing. Here is what I get after using the Curves : Doesnt it look nice already ? Now that we have our lineout, we can start colouring. The layer the lineout is on will be my TOP layer as in here : As you see, it's using the MULTIPLY mode, that way only the black are "pasted" with the underneath layers. See how I have different layers with the names of the parts of my picture ? For instance, I create a Skin layer that will contain everything that is skin in my drawing... and so on and so forth. I use the Paintbrush and the Eraser when I draw outside of the lines. That's pretty much it, and it's not very hard. Here is what I get after I have done my different layers : Now I can start the shading. Before you start, turn all the layers with color to Preserve Transparency. That way, you cant draw outside of the coloured areas of each layer. The background is pretty simple so I started doing a texture directly (using the Texture tutorial somewhere else in this forum... shameless plug, I know ). To do the shading, I use the Airbrush, set to 5% or so. When I want to make shadows, I use a slightly darker colour and set the Airbrush to the Multiply mode. When I want to make highlights, I use the Screen mode, with a lighter shade of the base colour. For shiny surface, I use Color Dodge instead of Screen, and Color Burn instead of Multiply... That's how I did the jewels in the picture (the gold part, necklace and pearls). Here is the shaded version. It's nice enough, but I can still make it better, it looks too "airbrushed" to me ! So, let's do some texturing now ! As you see in the Layers diagram above, I add a layer on top of the layers I want to put a texture in. For instance, I have a "Hair" layer that contains the hair of the woman, and above that, a "Hair texture" layer where I put a greyscale texture. The texture layers are in Overlay mode. That way, only the shadows and highlights are "pasted" on the underneath layer*S*. The problem is that you dont want the texture to be applied to ALL the layers underneath. To avoid that, I simly CTRL click on the color layer to get a selection, and that gives me where my texture will be done... I hope you get that, if you dont, let me know, I'll elaborate. Anyway, here's what I got after a bit more work on this lovely face : youpla :-P Edited by - ahw on 12/14/00 9:13:18 AM

2D and 3D Art Visual Arts

Started by ahw December 11, 2000 03:42 PM

37 comments, last by ahw 23 years, 8 months ago

Blade Runner

122

January 19, 2001 05:27 PM

Hay ahw i scaned some art but damn i left the cd at school so i will have to wait until next week which will be like wensday when i get the the cd to take home.

--------------------------I shall thrash his bloody head in, cut it from upon his shoulders, and as his blood flows effortlessly down my blade, I shall taste it's sweetness. Blade Runner’s Entertainment Nothing much right now...

ahw

Author

264

January 24, 2001 05:19 AM

Well, since I dont like when my threads die, here is something to keep it alive

It''s the beaver that I did above, coloured, Flash style.
I still am not a big fan of this style of drawing (it''s becoming way too common). But it certainly looks good

-----------------------------Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

Blade Runner

122

January 24, 2001 10:24 PM

Nice. I''ll try to get the CD from my teacher tommorow, hopefully he made a copy by now. It would have been nice if he would have given it to me but as soon as teachers find out that you know a little more than they do about computers ie: programming then they don''t trust you as much.

ahw

Author

264

February 07, 2001 09:06 AM

Since I did this drawing using my own method, I think it''s more appropriate to post it here rather than in the "Post you Art" thread.
Plus I get as chance to revive this own thread as well

Initially, I scanned a drawing done on an A4 piece of paper. I then used the method described above to do some colouring, then I worked on the shadowing and texturing some more... and there it is, DONE ! Total work, pfffff, probably more than 20 hours, I''d say.
Anyway, enjoy

youpla :-P

-----------------------------Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

trixter

122

February 09, 2001 12:51 PM

Here''s the first b&w pencil scan I ever colored. It came out alright... I guess it was done using my own method of coloring. No steps really. I just used the different brushes and blending modes till I got what I was looking for. No filters anywhere.

Carl "trixter"[email=carl@trixoft.com]carl@trixoft.com[/email]http://www.trixoft.com

Blade Runner

122

February 18, 2001 10:30 PM

Wassup ahw hay man i''m working on a personl project i''m gone to use your tut for parts of it. when i''m done with it and it''s posted on the web i''ll make sure that i tell you about it. i may have to get a little help with the drawning from some of the guies at my school.

IronFist

122

February 23, 2001 04:57 PM

I drew a picture and colored it with PSP7 using the techinique you showed us. This is the result:

I can't post the pic here because it's on geocities and it won't work, so just go here:
http://www.geocities.com/serratedangel/pics/Computer/guyinhatsm.jpeg

It makes the picture look really chartoony.

Edited by - IronFist on February 23, 2001 6:19:49 PM

Play Sumasshu, which is a game I programmed. CLICK HERE

Nomadic Soul

122

February 23, 2001 08:31 PM

I wish I had Photoshop or Paintshop... did this in Photoshop at my friends house in 20 minutes. Got hungry so all I did was stack colors upon colors using the a bigass brush, spray everything. Erase the eyes and horns and gave them their own color, erase the colors out of his body and made a crappy small flame thingie near his body by erasing certain area. No filters. Hungry again, going to eat, later all. Really wish I could've done something with those energy lines coming out of his hands tho, but my stomach is more important.
Stupid geocitie. Don't know why it wont work. Heres the link: http://www.geocities.com/alucard_dracula_xclone2/Gotak_copy_small_unfin.jpg

Edited by - Nomadic Soul on February 23, 2001 9:39:12 PM

Dude1:Look at this!Dude2:Ugh! That's disgusting.Dude1:Its art!Dude2: Its your puke.Dude1:Its abstract art,dammit!

IronFist

122

February 23, 2001 11:59 PM

You can get a trial version of PSP7 from their website: http://www.paintshoppro.com/

It works for 60 days (it let''s you go 30 days over the 30 trial). Then you can just reinstall it when the sixty days are up.

Play Sumasshu, which is a game I programmed. CLICK HERE

Mini tutorial 2 : Colouring your scans...

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