How to Make Pencils Look Like Inks in Photoshop
Digital Inking is quickly becoming an alternative to traditional inking in comic strips and comic books. Digital inking is a process that allows you to "ink" your penciled drawings in Photoshop CS without the need to invest in expensive inking pens. With a little bit of finesse and skill, you can ink like the pros without ever picking up an ink pen. This tutorial will show you how to take your pencil drawings and make them suitable for later coloring.
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Things You'll Need
- Pencil drawing
- Flatbed scanner
- Adobe Photoshop CS or later
- Lint-free cloth
- Glass cleaner
Instructions
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Spray glass cleaner on your scanner and wipe it thoroughly with a lint-free cloth. Make the glass as clear and shiny as possible. This will save you retouching work later as the scanner will pick up the dust as "holes" in your artwork.
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Scan your artwork at 100 percent of the final printed size at 300 dpi in "Grayscale" or "Gray Shades" mode. The exactly terminology varies depending on the scanner you're using, however do not scan in 1 bit Black & White or "line art" mode because you'll lose detail in your scan. Some scanners allow you to directly scan to Photoshop CS, others require you to scan to a file first and then open the file in Photoshop CS. If you need to convert the file to "Grayscale" mode in Photoshop CS, go to the "Image" menu select "Mode" and then select "Grayscale."
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Go to the "Image" menu and select "Adjustments..." > "Levels." Click on the background paper image with the "Set White Point" eyedropper tool and click on the darkest part of the image that you want to erase. This may take some experimentation to find the right point without losing too much detail in your image. If you have areas of your drawing that you've erased, but still show up on the scan, these are a good starting point. Drag the black slider on the left to the right to darken up the image. Don't worry if some extra lines come back that you don't want; you can delete them later.
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Go to the "Image" menu and select "Adjustments..." > "Brightness /Contrast..." Adjust the Brightness and Contrast sliders so that your image has the cleanest separation of white and black as possible. Select the "Eraser tool" from the tool bar and click and hold to erase any extra dots that you don't want.
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Click on the "Magic Wand Tool" and select the blackest area of your image. Go to the "Select" menu and choose "Similar." Go to the "Select" menu and choose "Modify" > "Expand..." type in a value of "1 pixels" and click "OK." Go to the "Edit" menu and select "Fill," choose "Black" as your fill color. Go to the "Select" menu and choose "Deselect."
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Use the "Eraser" tool to delete any unwanted spots or to make "holes" in black areas that you want to be white. Then, set the "Fill" color to "Black" in the toolbar and use the "Pencil" tool to fill in any white spots in the inked drawings and to clean up the lines.
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Tips & Warnings
It helps to make sure that your pencil sketch is as dark as possible before you scan it and try to erase any unwanted marks as much as possible.
Inking digital can be very tedious with a mouse. It's not required, but having a digital pen tablet does make the "inking" process easier.
