Load Actions
Actions are a way of recording a series of tasks done in Photoshop, in order. Someone halfway around the world can play it back. Not necessarily even on the same file, but a similar file - as an example, a well-scanned line art drawing. I can record the complicated things that require tons of explanation, have it take a scan and do it for you. You can get right to the fun stuff.
Download this link:
http://www.andypearlman.info/comic_make.zip
Open up the zip file and try double-clicking on it. If that doesn’t work, go to Window: Actions at the top of the screen and click on Load Actions... and go to back to where you put the file.
I’ve set up some actions designed to turn a flattened grayscale document into a CMYK document with transparency. There should now be a folder called comic_make.atn in the Actions Window.
This should reveal them.
You’ll also see a bunch of checkmarks and toggle windows - don’t touch those unless you know exactly why you might be doing that.
Click Make Scan into Line Art -
At the bottom of the Actions Window, buttons similar to that of a VCR are down there. Click on the play button.
You’ll see a message pop up, warning you that the document should be a grayscale document. Click on
Continue. Now for something on the strange side - we’re going to run a slight blur on the line art. A very tiny amount. It might seem odd to blur something to make it sharp, but it works and that’s all that counts.
Gaussian Blur Dialog Box
0.3 pixels is a good measurement. Try 0.1 if you’re working with thin linework, 0.5 if the lines are thick or the scan is really hi-rez.
Look at gray pixels out in the middle of nowhere, all by themselves. Odds are that if someone drew line art, they didn’t draw that; the scanner picked up a stray piece of dust or an eraser mark. A pixel by itself will blur significantly, making it much closer in color to the surrounding pixels. A dark pixel surrounded by white will become light gray. A light pixel smothered in black will turn dark gray.
Curves Adjustment Layer Dialog Box
This allows us to control the whites, the highlights, the midtones, shadows, and blacks of an image. The default for the action is to the right - it makes the 25% highlights input into 0% pure white output. It also makes 75% shadows input into 100% pure black output. Therefore, if there’s a light gray 25% pixel, it will turn white. If there’s a dark gray 75% pixel, it will turn black.
As many of those pixels came about from the blur, it will also apparently smooth out and sharpen the scan. Here’s the reason it is so powerful – Drag the curves handle top to the left or right to thin or thicken the lines. Click in the middle and drag up or down to control by how much. Make sure the lines turn black and the background white. You control the scanner; the scanner doesn’t control you. After doing this, you should have a solid, cleaned up scan. Not perfect, but for now, good enough.
Prepare to Color
What we have to do next is convert our cleaned up scan into something easy to color. Look at the layer and channel windows. You should see a layer named Background in the layer window; a channel named gray in the channel menu.
Make Comic CMYK
Going back to the actions window, below the make line art in the Actions Window, click on Make Comic CMYK. Then hit the play button as shown:
Instead of just one layer, there’s a whole bunch of layers in a layer set – the folder named lighting layers. There’s also another layer named drawing layer, set to Darken, and with transparency locked.
What I want you to do is click on the eye directly to the left of the Background layer. All of a sudden, gray and white squares pop up everywhere.
This is transparency – where we see the black, that’s where the ‘ink’ of Photoshop is showing on the sheet of clear plastic. Those gray and white squares aren’t there – they’re just showing where there is a complete lack of image. If you tried to print your current image, it would still print the color of the paper – white.
Make a Color Palette
Turn that eye back on. What we want to do is start coloring the document and play around a bit with those lighting options you have. What we want to do now is make a small document, say a 3”x3” at 72 dpi image which is CMYK. This is going to be our palette document, the one we can keep going back to for the colors we picked. Using the pencil tool and the color picker, we’re going to use the pantone color picker. Lay down some colors into this separate palette document. You don’t have to put every color in the sun there, just 6-12 colors you’re certain you intend to use. Check out how the colors look together. Are there sets of warm or cool colors?
Brush Tool into Eyedropper
If you’re using any brush tool, you can hold down the option-key (alt for windows) and it will turn into the eyedropper tool. This will let you select the color in the palette document without actually having to click out of the document you’re coloring.
Have the two documents open at the same time – this will let you work faster. Everything is about being able to work faster and produce better work.
How to Fill an Area with Color
Hit option-delete (alt-delete for windows). You should see everything fill with that foreground color. Now, as it turns out, we likely want to make say rocks gray, not everything else.
That sounds awful - that everything would be a color we’d have to eliminate later on. On the other hand, if we didn’t have to change the color from gray, we’d have to change the color from white! The gray color is actually not a big deal. If you’re working efficiently, you should only have to go along one side of any given line, not both. By filling in everything, you’re naturally getting rid of a whole bunch of lines you might otherwise have to go over.
If you are working with a comic book page with panels, you should fill individual panels this way - select the area first with the rectangular marquee or lasso tools, then hit option-delete.
Let’s start working on the image itself. We’ll zoom into the image by holding down the spacebar and the command key at the same time. This turns the brush tool into the zoom tool. Click and drag on the area you want to zoom into - an example might be a rock.
Coloring Quickly
Isolate an area
Click in a convenient first location. Now hold down the shift key. Without clicking, move the mouse along the line to the next point. Then click. What should happen is a straight line from the first place you clicked to the next place you clicked. Move the mouse again without clicking, hold down the shift key, then click again. Repeat until it is closed. Change to the magic wand tool, click in the center. Contiguous and Use All Layers should be checked in the Options Window. Now hit Option-Delete – the big Delete key. You should see it filled with color. One of the things you should notice is that you're painting underneath the line - this is because you're painting on either the background or a new color layer I’ve created - not the drawing layer up at top. The line conveniently hides the edge for us.
Just paint the area in
This tends to be the quick and dirty solution, but it actually works quite well.
Magic Wand Tool
First, you need to close off the airholes. Use the pencil tool to close off any gaps in the lines. Then use the magic wand tool to click on the area you wanted filled. The Options Window for Magic Wand should have Contiguous and Use All Layers checked again.
If you now hit Option-Delete, you would have exactly the same effect as the Paint Bucket tool. Wait, so am I saying two steps is better than one? No, not at all. The problem is simple - one of three things would happen in the real world - either you’re not working on the actual line work, which will be dropped in later. Or you’re going to have worse lines than you should. Finally, you might miss the edge of the lines entirely, giving you lighter gaps or halos.
Select: Modify: Expand Here’s where the true power of the Magic Wand tool is - going up to the Select menu at the top of the screen, go to Select: Modify: Expand and expand the selection by one pixel.
What this will do is expand the selection underneath the line work. When the line prints, it will automatically hide or get rid of the extra color. Therefore you won’t see any halos around the edges of the lines where the color doesn’t quite reach.
Paint Bucket Tool A lot of people like the Paint Bucket tool. Some people like typing with a manual typewriter, too. The problem with a manual typewriter is about the same as the Paint Bucket tool - how to spend a lot more time getting things right. Paint Bucket, if it isn't right the first time you do it, you have to do it again. Magic Wand lets you look at the selection first, then fill. Much better.
Another thing you can also do is make multiple selections
that you then expand all at once.
Things to Remember
1) Open your Grayscale scan
2) Run Make Scan into Line Art from the Actions
menu.
3) Run Make Comic CMYK from the Actions menu
4) Save your file as a Photoshop document.
5) Work on just the background layer or new layer you
make for color for now.
6) Use the pencil tool to color
7) Option-Delete fills with the foreground color
8) Magic Wand tool should have Contiguous and Use
All Layers checked. For now, it is okay to ignore the
Anti-Aliased button.
9) Select: Modify: Expand and enter a value of at least
one pixel. Use the shift key to add to your selection,
the option key to subtract.
10) Don’t forget to keep saving.
Another thing to try is playing with the lighting layers. If you paint on them with white, they'll shade the document. Paint with black, they go away. Paint with grey or a brush set to less than full opacity and you'll get a range of tones. These are adjustment layers set up to provide some reasonably straightforward options - they won't be right all the time or perhaps for you even half the time. But they're set up for you.
Rules for doing shading:
Shading is an effect. It always goes on a new layer. Always. You can get rid of a layer, tone down a layer(by adjusting the opacity of it), but getting rid of an effect on your flat when they're on the same layer is a nightmare no one should be going through.
If you don't like my lighting layers, just make up a new one. Sometimes, you're going to know exactly what shade of red you want as a highlight. Just make a new layer and go to work.
Use anti-aliased brushes, not aliased tools for shading. With the line art, the flats will work better with tools such as the pencil tool or magic wand with anti-aliasing turned off. But shading will look horrible that way because it won't hide the hard edge underneath the line work.
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