Gatorade Frost

My friend drew this picture of me and him, and I'm hoping to try to convert it to a colored image on my computer, at least some what realistically. Does anyone know of any way to do this in photoshop with an image like this? Are there any online tutorials you know of that might be useful?

Sorry that this isn't my own work, but I'm hoping to build on it and send it back to him, since we might start an online comic. He draws, I color and shade, and we both do the scripting.

exile2k4

Ok, I wasn't really sure from what you wrote, but I'm assuming to start with you don't want the lines from the paper. There's no good way to remove them (textured lines on textured background intersecting with other textured lines you want to keep), so I've had a quick stab at it for you:



From here on in it's really simple to colour the image whilst retaining these lines. All you need to do after opening the above image in ps is:

1) select all (ctrl+a)
2) copy (ctrl+c)
3) paste as new layer (ctrl+v), set layer type (the dropdown menu under the word "layers" in the layer window (f7 if it isn't open already)) as any of:

darken
mutliply
colour burn
linear burn

All give slightly different results depending on colour/tone values of the respective layers, but will give you roughly what you're looking for (darker parts of the upper layer show, lighter parts are transparent). Multiply tends to give a smoother effect as midtones pick up the colour of the background layer, whereas with darken greys remain grey until they're lighter than the background, at which point they become transparent.

4) blank the background (select background layer, ctrl+a, fill (g) with white)
5) create new layer (shift+ctrl+n) <- this will become your "colour" layer, you can create as many of these as you like
6) drag the layer (2) underneath the layer that has your drawing (1) from the layers window.
7) paint (or whatever) onto the colour layer (layer 2)
8) you may well want to adjust the brightness contrast (alt->i->a->c) on the drawing layer, to make the drawn layer "cleaner", but that's all personal choice.



The figure on the left is set as "multiply", the figure on the right is "darken". As you can see the midtones pick up the background colour on the lhs, whereas on the right they stay the grey of the original image.

If your friend is doing more of these drawings, and the lined paper isn't a crucial part of the artistic concept, i'd strongly recommend working on blank paper.

Gatorade Frost

Yeah, I'm going to ask him to from now on.

How'd you go about removing the lines? Very carefully with the eraser tool?

Thanks for making the lineless art for me, it'll speed things up. And obviously, thanks a ton for all the information you provided me on photoshopping this.

Gatorade Frost

It took me a minute to figure out, but that's pretty rad.

exile2k4

Congratulations on getting the colouring working, photoshop can be a bit bewildering when you're not used to it but it's a brilliantly effective tool.

I used the rubber stamp tool with a soft brush and did it carefully "by hand", so to speak. Erasers are great when you have layers underneath that you want to show through, but with a single layer image like this it would mean you'd lose the grain of the paper, and the texture of the line at the edges where you've erased. Because there's a regularity to the lines you're getting rid of, using any kind of colour replace doesn't really work because you'll still be able to see the overall pattern.

The way I did it (it's kinda boring) create a new layer (ctrl+shift+n) so that you can correct any mistakes easily, then select the rubber stamp tool (s). Define the point it will work from by holding down alt and clicking. After you've let go of alt, wherever you click next will copy the first point you've clicked, if you work the brush to the right it will copy what's to the right of that point, move to the left it will copy to the left etc.

Pick out an area that has about the same tone/pattern as the area that's been obscured by the blue/red line (so where the line crosses the white paper, i selected an area of the paper just underneath and brushed it along, where it crosses pencil I selected an area of pencil with a similar kind of pattern). I used a soft-edged brush and tried to blend it carefully.

Bear in mind that you can use any brush type and opacity when you're doing this, I tend to use quite soft-edged ones unless I'm working on something with an obvious repeating pattern. Also, there's a tickbox up the top that lets you choose to either copy from all layers or only the one you're currently working on.

Once you're done and happy with the results, merge the layer down into the original pencil one (ctrl+e merges the currently selected layer with the one beneath it OR merges all layers you have linked together).

One fun thing to play with once you have the drawing is different ways of colouring it. Here's one of the things I'm working on at the moment - it's basically a line drawing of a girl coloured with various different scanned textures/photos/paintings/parts done in photoshop, with the colours and layering heavily reworked:


A girl contemplates romance/suicide in 2005 (In the end she will become a "Suicide Girl")

here's the original drawing:



Sorry for the long post, basically what i meant to say was "(s), alt-click where you want to copy from, then click where you want to copy".

Gatorade Frost

That's pretty fantastic.

Thanks again for all the help.

Gatorade Frost

Alright, last one, I swear.

This one's done with the reference image that Scott used to draw with, so I managed to swipe the colors off of it to make it more realistic.