Creating Line art in Photo

[Asmartartz]

Hi. I hope you dont mind me asking this question but I have got Photo not Designer and before this I was using PS to create line art from my drawings so I could digitally colour create them. 

I tried to use the process that I used before in Photo but I could not recreate some of the steps. I realise that things work differently but hoping that there is still a better way to do it then I ended up making. The process I used to use is below. The problem I have is that I cannot find a way to do the steps that I have marked in red. I ended up using the magic tool to select the white areas but it kept missing bits and was not a good solution for me and took very long and my selection was quite shabby and pixelated once I had finished. Can you advise what sort of process (if any) i can use in Photo to recreate this please. I dont want to have to buy Designer yet while I am still a beginner and learning the ropes in Photo.  

 

Creating Line art from Scans

 

* Open scanned image in Photoshop

* Make a copy of original layer and rename for easier finding

* Adjustment layer – Black & White

* Option box - check all options are in the middle default position of scale. If any altered bring back to middle.

* Adjustment layer – Levels

* Adjust as required to create more contrast and get rid of any unused white areas

* Adjustment layer – Curves

* Create S shape to enhance image

* Go back to Copy layer and zoom into 100% and then go to Unsharp Mask

* Big radius – 120 – 150%

* Amount – 60 -90%

* Threshold – low – 12 - 14%

Touching up image to remove blemishes

* Go to Brush and choose a standard brush using the black and white colours to remove any blemishes on image so image is clean

* Then delete original layer

Define line art

* Select – Colour Range – options box – Select sampled colours/selection Preview-Grayscale/Invert/Image

* Then use colour picker and click on white area within image – OK

* This then creates marching ants around the line art with only the black lines selected

* Select/Modify/Smooth – 2 pixels

* Optional: Select/Modify/Contract – 1 pixel

* Then fill the selection with black. Make sure foreground colour is black and then ALT+backspace to fill with black.

* Invert selection again so white selected

* Then hit Delete and white background removed so line art is now on transparent background.

* Deselect with Control + D

* Save this as a PS layer file for future use

[barninga]

well i guess that the lines in red describe the steps you are used to in photoshop and can't easily reproduce in AP.

i could not understand what is the effect of the first line in red, but at that point i tried a different approach, after the "delete original layer" step.

 

i applied a very slight gaussian blur, then a threshold adjustment.

then i created a new pixel layer with the result of the adjustments using the "merge visible" command.

finally, on this new layer i applied a detect edges filter, selected the white color (magic wand, not contiguous), and then edit=>cut.

 

the final result was the uotline of the original image, in black, with a transparent background.

[Asha]

For the selection, could you try changing the tolerance of the Magic Wand tool to get more of the selected color range, and then Refine Selection (or feather, grow, etc) from the Select menu? Or Select Tonal Range from the Select menu?

[Asmartartz]

Thanks both. Yes it was the steps in red that I could not work out how to reproduce in AP. Baringa thanks for your ideas I will try that. Is there a way that you can work out that you can fill the line selection with black to make it a pure outline? I tried to use the fill command in AP but did not go quite according to plan.

 

Asha I will definitely look at playing with the Tonal Range options as was not aware that you could use this for selections. 

I understand that there are several different options for selecting things in AP and need to understand how these work, and learn a new process.

[barninga]

asmatartz,

 

i forgot a step: after applying the edge detect filter, i inverted the resulting image.

 

about filling the lines, i just tried by feathering a bit the selection of the white areas, inverting the selection and painting black on the image with a very thick brush; the invert the selection again and cut out the white.