Photoshop Fun - How to colour line art in Photoshop

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Denise Hughes, and I'm an illustrator and surface design for this project. I don't be really fun to make a digitally color. Print your home using your original artwork. We'll learn how to clean up your image and color it in photo shop in easy, bite sized sessions. By the end of this short tutorial, you'll have a beautiful finished piece ready to friends, your home or maybe even give us a gift. Also, don't worry. If you don't have a sketch to use at this time, I'll be supplying a sketch in my class resources that you're free to use. But it really would be nice to see some of you I worked, so I really hope you can join me. 2. Preparing your artwork: Okay, So to start this project, your need a piece off Leinart on a four, scanned at 300 d p. I and then opened in front a shop. Now, if you don't have your own pen and ink sketch, you are welcome to use this piece, which you can find in the class resources along with a link to Adobe Photo Shop. And that's a free trial for anyone who doesn't have it. Um, now it's always a good idea. I find Teoh. Check your campus eyes before you begin on DTI. Do that. You need to go to image, go down to canvas size and have a look. Just make sure that that campus size is the size of a four. So in millimeters it should be around 2 10 by 297 And that's fine. We're going to just press OK now. The next thing we need to check is that we can add color to our image, and in order to do that, we need to make sure that our image is in RG B mode. So what we do to check that we go to image again down to mode on at the moment you can see that the images in gray scale we need to be an RGB color. Now, what that allows us to do is to add a variety of different colors to our image. If it was in grayscale, you would only be able to our colors that are tones off black and gray. Now, the final thing we need to dio is just to unlock are there. So if you haven't got your layers open, go to window down two layers and check on that that will open up your layers palette, not in the layers. You can see that this whole image is on a single layer on. Do you have the white background on the line are together on one leg and that little lock means that you won't be able to edit this if you don't get rid of the look. So all you need to get rid of that Locke is just a double click on it. That window will pop up, which you then just close. But the lock has disappeared and therefore we can editor image. Now, this is the time, Teoh, make sure that you've if you have your impending drawing, that you've put it onto the class Project gallery. I really love seeing other people's artwork, so please try and do that. 3. Cleaning up your artwork: The next step of the project is to clean up your image, ready to add some color. Firstly, we're going to adjust the levels. Go to image adjustments and levels. You'll see that this screen comes up with three sliders at the bottom. If you move the left hand slider to the right, it will make things slightly darker. Move this up until the black lines off really black, the slider on the right. If move to the left will make the background whiter when you're happy with it, press OK, now we're going to delete the background. Take the Magic 12 Come up to the top bar. Make sure your tolerance is set at about 20. Make sure the box marked contiguous is unchecked. Place your magic 12 in the background, click and everything is selected. Then hit the delete key. And what that has done is removed the white background Now to day select on PC Press Control De on a Mac Command D. At this stage, I would go back into image, go to adjustments on levels again, and I would just major the left hand slider up slightly to get It was dark as I can now, as you can see, if you open up your layers palette, which is in windows less, you can see that the line work is now on a single layer without a background. Very importantly, I'm going to name this layer. You can call it whatever you like, but I'm going to call it Lion Line. Opt. At first glance, it looks like that the Magic one tool has taken all the background away. However, there are probably one or two clusters of pixels left that need taking away. And there's a really easy way that we can do this with your line lion Leinart selected. Go down to the bottom of the layers palette and press F X got to strike now in stroke, there are two things that you're going to need to make sure off. Um, you want to make the stroke about four pixels wide four or five pixels wide, and you need to make the color really bright. So choose a nice, bright color. I'm going to pick right press. OK, now what has happened here is that any straight pixel has been outlined with a red stroke that makes it now really easy for us to see where any straight pixels are. So from here we can take our Doolittle Onda we can delete or the red pixel at all of the pixels that shouldn't be here that outlined in red. Now, this is going to take me some time, so I'm going to speed up. If you make a mistake and you rub up the wrong piece of line, you could always go back stage. Um, you just need to press on a PC, Control said. Or on a Mac command said So now you're Leinart is beautifully clean and ready for any professional job. We don't need the effects anymore, so just pick it up on drag it to the trash. So now we're ready for the next stage, which is the coloring. 4. Colouring your artwork: If you haven't done so already, it's a good idea to make a separate layer for the background, so go to the creator, knew their button in the layers palette. Click it, and it will bring up another layer that's name it background and drag it underneath your line out there, making sure you're working on this land. Go to your color picker, choose white, then pick up the paint bucket tool and click on that will give you a layer behind your Leinart that is white. But these two are now on separate less. You see you can turn them off. We're going to add some color now, and we're going to put each color on a new layer. The reason we do this is that it means that if you're working professionally and a company asked for a different color way, it's much easier to make changes for them. So will open up some new layers. I'm going to use a yellow a dark yellow and orange, a light green on a dark green. I'm going to name each one. Once you've done that, go back to the line out there. Now we can use the magic one tool to help of color on it will really speed things up. So select the magic one tool at this time, check contiguous and go over to the area that you want to color. I'm going to cut of the face and I'm also going to color another area as well on to pick two areas. What you need to do is select the first, as we've done, and then hold down the shift key and then select any subsequent areas and you can see that they all stay selected. Then I'm going to go over to my color picker and I'm going to choose the yellow that I want to use by adjusting the sliders. Once you have all the area selected that you wish to color on and the right color in the color picker, make sure that you're working on your color layer. This is my dark yellow. Then there a couple of keyboard shortcuts that you can use to fill in a on a PC. You press, um, old backspace on a Mac, you press option delete. And when you do that, all those areas are then colored with your chosen color on the color is in the appropriate layer today. Select your selection on a PC Press Control day or on a Mac. It's command E. When you want to select another area to color, go back to your line out. Our this time I'm going to select the green of this grass the light green. So I take my magic One tool click on it. I go to my color picker. I choose a green that I like, all right, and I press backspace. Poor option delete on Mac. And again, if you go down to that color there, your color will go into the appropriate, and then we carry on coloring until the image is completed. I'm going to speed this up a little bit now. - Lastly , you might want to change the Leinart from black to a different color all together, because black can sometimes look a little bit hard. This is quite a simple thing to do. We go on to the Leinart there on go up Teoh image adjustments on hue and saturation, and from here we can see that there's a couple of little check boxes on. One of them is called Colorized Picture that's checked and then you need to play around with these sliders until you get a color that you like on as a top tip, you will need Teoh. Just adjust the lightness to be a little bit lighter before any of the colors will start to change. And it's a good idea to bring the saturation up a little bit a swell on. Then we can see if we do that as you move the hue, slider colors begin to change and you can go as bright or as dark as you want to. I'm going to choose a more neutral shade. I think I'm going to go into the Browns. Yeah, I'm happy with that. 5. Final Thoughts: I would really encourage you now to go and share your Finnish design on the class projects Page. I love to see your work. I'm always really excited to see what people have made on. As I said, it really helps to encourage other students as well. So congratulations on finishing your piece of digital out. I hope you're really proud of the results.