How To: Clean-Up

Hi there everyone. This is a post to review the clean-up that I had shown on Wednesday. These are the basic steps I use to clean-up and prep a comic for coloring or just cleaning it up in general. This is done on Photoshop CS3, but I know it can still be done on Photoshop 4(Yeah, 4, the REALLY old one)

So the first thing here is to get the image you want to use. Normally I pencil in the art, pen it, then erase the pencil. This makes clean-up much easier. In this case, I have no erased the pencil work and kept it in. Place your scanned image as a separate layer so you can work on it more easily.

Now the first step is to make it easier to manage. To do this, turn it into a black and white image. You can do this by going to Image -> Mode -> GrayScale

It will ask if you want to discard the color information. Say yes. If it asks if you want to flatten the image, say no. You want to keep everything as a separate layer.

Next is the actual clean up, setting up the levels of the image. The result of doing this is to bring out the blacks and whites, while lessening the grays (Pencils).

To do this you will want to go to Image -> Adjustments -> Levels

By choosing levels it’ll bring up this window:

You’ll notice little arrow things on the window. Slide them back and forth and you’ll see results on the main image. Adjust them accordingly until you have the desired effect.

Once that is done, now it is time the eliminate the white of the image while keeping the black. Think of it as inking a transparency sheet. There’s no white on it, but the lining remains. This way you can color what ever you want, underneath, without it overlapping the Black Lining.

To do this you will want to look on the lower right of your screen where you can find tabs. You will want to click on the Channel tab.

You should get this screen. While here, on the lower part of the selections, choose the circle button. Just click it once. It’ll make your line work crawl with ants so to say.

Once you see the ants crawling all over your screen. Hit delete on your keyboard. The result will be that your whites have been removed from the line work.

Now the next step is to re-darken the image. To do this, click on the Layers tab and click on the Preserve Transparency button as shown here:

What Preserve Transparency does is makes it so what you color, only effects the layer. So in this case, the line-work. NOW before I forget, deselect the image so there are no more ants. You can do this by going to Select -> Deselect.

With Preserve Transparency selected, take the Pencil tool, choose the color Black (Or Red if you want the line work to be red, or whatever color you want) and stroke over the line-work. This will re-darken the artwork.

LAST step, just go to Image -> Mode -> RGB (This will turn colors back on)

Now your piece is ready for coloring. Just create a layer underneath the Line-work in the Layers tab, choose that layer and color where ever you desire. The line-work will be preserved while colors are added. If you have any questions or corrections to be tossed in, I’ll edit the post accordingly! Peace and happy arting!

-Dalis