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Preamble: With the advent of digital cameras and other imaging systems, the art of effective scanning seems to be gradually dying out.  When it comes to traditional art, however, there remains little choice - if you want to get your line art from paper to your screen you will need to use a scanner.  This method, however, is fraught with problems, extending from finding the perfect color mix to working out the ideal levels of clarity.     The simple technique detailed in this tutorial will not act as a cure-all, unfortunately, but it does detail a method of cleaning up scanned line art in the quickest possible fashion, thus making it ready for further manipulation.

 

Step 1: Before you begin you need to pick your subject matter.  Thankfully Photoshop is capable of handling almost any form of sketch, from pencil scribble to ink outline.  Of course, it is possible to scan a pencil drawing and alter the lines so that they LOOK like ink, but I recommend inking properly in the first place as it gives a much cleaner result.  In my example sketch, I made my lines with a ballpoint pen on crosshatched paper.  Removing the crosshatching and cleaning up the lines forms the rest of the basis for this tutorial. Step 2: So... lets get started!   First of all you need to scan your art. You don’t need any extra software to do it - just Windows XP and a compatible scanner. To start scanning, load up the Windows  Control Panel > Scanners and cameras dialog and click next, click on “other type” or something like this and then “Set type”. Alter your settings as much as possible to resemble mind on the left.  You can, of course, alter the DPI, brightness and contrast to different amounts if you like, but I generally recommend that you set DPI value between 100-300.   When you are finished playing around with your settings, scan your image and save it to your hard drive. If your operating system is different than mine I'm afraid that you'll have to figure this step out yourself.  Sorry... but the aim of this tutorial is not advanced scanner operation, and there are manuals for that kind of thing anyway! ;) Tip: If your scanner is very old and you have problems with scanning 3D surfaces I recommend  “Text” mode from the scanner options, so it will scan only sharp edges.

Step 3: Now run Photoshop and open up the scanned file. Damn! It looks pretty awful! It may be hard to figure out where to start, but the easiest way to remove the ugly crosshatching pattern is to lighten it out of existence. To do this, open up Image > Adjustments > Levels from the main Photoshop menu and change the levels to make your art darker.   In my example I altered the dialog to look a little something like the image below. I set Input levels from 30 do 50 in first box, 0,3-0,4 in second and pressed “OK”.   If you are having a hard time understanding levels and how they work, now might be a good time to read the tutorial on Understanding Levels.

Step 4:  Now for the next step.  Open up Image > Adjustments > Brightness & Contrast, enter the settings in the first dialog box below and press OK.  Repeat this process with the second box, and then with the third box.  After each Brightness/Contrast change you will notice the main lines getting darker and the faint lines getting fainter.  Hurrah! Step 5:  As an optional step you can now run Image > Adjustments > Levels once more with less restrictive settings to improve overall edge sharpness.  Manual fine-tuning is the key here, but if you are lost you can see the settings which I used below: Step 6: And there you go - your image is now 100% clean and white, ready to color and put into comics or more complex artwork.  If you are so inclined at this point you can use Select > Color Range to isolate and remove the white itself... but that's more the subject of another tutorial and not everyone works that way anyway.   Good luck!  :)

- Tutorial written by shinmoteuchi

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