Scan artwork and remove background so can paint on Affinity Designer "under" the inking

[DStone]

Is there a way to have a drawing so the lines are "extracted" from the paper?..I don't want to have to trace my drawings...I want to be able to paint it with Affinity.  I have tried to paint reducing my opacity but you can see the paint lines...I want to paint under the inking.  (I'm new to this so any help is appreciated).

 

Thanks!

Daniel

 

[j.king]

I think I follow you. If you are scanning something to bring into AD, that is a flattened image. The 'ink' drawing and background are all one image. The only way to have ONLY the 'ink' (minus the background of the scanned image) would be to trace it, manually or automatically. When I do this I still use Inkscape for auto tracing. It does a tolerably good job tracing as long as the image is good resolution and strong black drawing on clean white background. You could also use Background Eraser in Affinity Photo. It works very well too but you will end up with a transparent 'image' (raster) file, under which you could paint. If you need the drawing to be actual lines or shapes (vector), you would have to trace it as mentioned before. Hope that helps.

[DStone]

Ugh...LOL...thanks for the response...not sure what Inkscape is but I'll check it out...I was hoping there was just a way for the program to automatically select all lines and remove the rest...wouldn't that be handy:). Thanks again.

[j.king]

It would be handy

Inkscape is a free, open source vector editing program. Been around for a long time. I hate it for most anything else, but it does have autotrace which I use frequently. Affinity still does not offer an autotrace function.

[Old Bruce]

If you are scanning black ink on white paper you could try having a blend mode of Darken or Multiply on the scanned image. Hundred percent opacity.

[wonderings]

Depending on the complexity of the image and the background you want removed, it does not always take that long to remove the "paper" from the scan. You can do select all the white background and delete. Issues come when colours are close to white and get selected as well as the white. You can do it all manually and again, unless a super complex image like trying to remove background through foliage or strands of hair, it is not super time consuming. 

If it is worth paying for there is a website you can use and do it yourself. You can see with a low quality image how it will come out before paying for anything

https://www.remove.bg

[John Rostron]

16 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

If you are scanning black ink on white paper you could try having a blend mode of Darken or Multiply on the scanned image. Hundred percent opacity.

I thought that blend modes affected how two layers interacted. How can they affect a single scanned image?

@DStone, are your lines pale in comparison with the drawing? If so, then a Threshold Adjustment should work.

John

[Dazmondo77]

Like j.king I prefer vectors and usually convert sketches via Image Vectoizer or Vectorize plus just lately, with the latest 1.10 release I've done complete vector comic style illustration with all the line work done with the pen tool and shape curve, which is great for working digital and vector end to end - Although if you are working raster, as long as you're scanning and working to a decent size and resolution, it's super easy to do what you want with blend ranges, I usually duplicate the base linework or sketch then place on the top layer, apply a blend range which is non destructive and always tweak-able, lock the layer, then construct the paint layers below and set the highlights paint layers to screen or overlay and the shadows to multiply then play with the opacity.  seems to work OK for me - I'm not great at explaining so here's a vid grab:

[PaulEC]

If you need to do this regularly, it might be worth getting Affinity Photo. To remove a white background from a black (or other dark colour) you can use the Erase White Paper filter.

[v_kyr]

For vectorization either vectorize/retrace it manually, or using some third party bitmap to vector tracing tools. See for example ...

Some forum threads about bitmap tracing/vectorization:

• Image Tracing in Affinity Designer?
• Image Trace to Vector Path
• Converting Pixel drawing to Vector?
• Auto Trace In AFFINITY DESIGNER
• Best Image Vectorizer for Mac with Affinity Designer
• ... and so on ...

Vectorization and autotracing software for Win + Macs:

• Super Vectorizer 2 (commercial, Mac)
• TracedLines (commercial, Mac)
• Intaglio Vectorize (free to use, Mac)
• DragPotrace (Mac) + Potrace (free, Win + Mac)
• Potrace (free, Win + Mac)
• AutoTrace (free, Win+Mac)
• Inkscape (free, Win + Mac)
• MS Expression Design 4 (win, nowadays free)
• Image Vectorizer (commercial, mac)
• Vector Magic (commercial, win + mac)

Online tracing tools:

• autotracer
• vectorizer
• vectorization
• Vectorize Raster Images Online (online Photopea, free)
• ...etc...

Online centerline supporting tracing tools:

• Rapid resizer
• fConvert
• Online Vectorizer
• ...etc...

Here on the forum itself ...

• Delineate - A raster to SVG converter

 

[Old Bruce]

4 hours ago, John Rostron said:

I thought that blend modes affected how two layers interacted. How can they affect a single scanned image?

Put the colours underneath the scanned layer.

[John Rostron]

The OP has not given any indication of the colours or intensity of the lines or the drawing so it is difficult to give a useful answer.

John