Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

The magic wand is your best friend. xD I used the magic wand tool on pretty much the entire thing. >.> First you scan an inked drawing. Pencil drawings are still applicable, but they're harder to do for me because I like clean black lines and usually pencil drawings end up with grainy dark lines. -.-; But after you have the drawing you want scanned, then put it into Photoshop and use the magic wand (W) tool to delete all of the white in the background. Basically, and this is the way I do it, you use the wand and highlight each white area, and then use the brush tool or pencil tool (B) set at white to color the background white and remove all the noise. If you use the erase, it'll make the background black... Found that out the hard way... But then, you go to the Image drop down list at the top toolbar, down to Mode, and convert the image from RGB to Greyscale. It'll ask you if you want to dicard the color information. Click yes and let it go to greyscale, and then go back to that Image drop down list and this time go to Attributes, then Brightness/Contrast, and adjust the brightness and contrast. I usually leave the brightness right where it is and move the contrast all the way up to 100%, because that's what creates my black lines. And here is where you'll find out if you missed a spot when you were whitening the bakground, because it'll get real grainy and dark. You can cancel and go back or apply and use the pencil tool to erase the grainy-ness. So since it's still in greyscale, in order to put color on it, you'll have to go back and change it back to RGB. Then use the wand tool to higlight the spot you want colored and use the brush or pencil tool to color it.

That's pretty much how I do it. >.> It sounds complicated but it really only takes like 15 or 20 minutes to get the clean black lines. The rest of the time it takes to color. xD