Pencil drawing / photoshop
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- Atkinson
I have some pencil drawings with lots of fine detail, drawn in light, 2H pencil. I want to scan them into PS and select the drawing / remove the background. I know I could zoom in and do it pixel by pixel, or magic wand the BG, or use layer masking. However using these methods [deleting BG] will also delete some of the pencil marks, and using pixel by pixel is almost pointless.
Is there a way, or another prog which makes this task a little simpler?
- Atkinson0
PS not all are 2H pencil, but the marks are very fine in parts.
- Atkinson0
yeah thing with that is you loose the tones of the pencil - it all becoming black for example. I need to keep the pencil as accurate as possible
- kalkal0
It should still keep notes really like that because the selection it creates has levels of transparency of 0-255
- kalkal0
Btw, are you getting good scans? I used to find it a nightmare trying to get scans looking as good as the original drawing!
- kalkal0
This is a bit lame btw, but couldn't you alternatively use multiply on the drawing layer and do any colouring (or whatever you want to do with the image) on layers below that. You won't loose any detail at all!
- Horp0
Best thing to do is work on different sections of the illustration. Lasso delicate areas and dodge out the background, avoiding the linework, adjusting levels and whatnot.
Then move on to another area and work on that in a way that is sensitive to the levels there. You can be quite general (and therefore fast) if you compartmentalise the whole into different regions of tonal sensitivity.
- jtb260
Since they are black and white try pasting it into a layer mask, you may have to invert it to get the right effect, then just create a fill layer below it using the color of your choice.
- Ghostschool0
You can create boost the levels and contrast on one version create a channel so you have a selection of all the line work.
Then use this selection on your original ie with the levels and contrast unaffected this should knock the background out and still keep your tonal range.
- Atkinson0
yes that sounds like it might work. Alpha / layer mask are all the same / similar thing? Transparent BGs?
@Ghostschool - sounds like it might work although with v fine [hairline] pencil drawings the tolerance has to be so far down that when selecting the bolder parts of the drawing there a 1-2px border. @kalkal Scanning - yes not bad at all using a Canon all in one, it's getting the scan and working with it in PS that'd problematic!
- lukus_W20
Some scanning programs let you do adjustments before the scan actually takes place - this can form a good part of the solution, because you're not forced to start battling with aliasing that's been added by compression/ND routines that the scanner automatically applies.
Other things that might work include making use of calculations in Photoshop. This is good, because it allows you to mix two images based on channel information in a more advanced way to just combining two layers using the standard blend techniques.
For example; using calculations, you can take an image - and apply a blur (or any other filter effect) to only part of an image using a predefined gradient as a mask. Or alternatively, you can use calculations to extract an image from a variable gradient background by combining the two highest contrast channels - this kind of technique could be used to create a good mask for the white paper.
- scarabin0
you guys make it sound complicated.
just add a levels layer to get your tones the way you want, pop into the channels, duplicate one, invert, then cmd-click to make a selection.
pop back into your layers palette and fill that selection with black on a new layer.
done
- WrappedInBooks0
Easiest is to make the drawing a Multiply layer and then all the other images/color etc. go beneath.
- ooops...saw someone beat me to it.WrappedInBooks
- you can't change the line color or anything this way thoughscarabin
