Expert: LizaL - 1/1/2005

Question
IF I SCAN IN A LINE DRAWING(BLACK INK)IT NEVER REALLY LOOKS BLACK, OBVIOUSLY. MY SKETCHES ARE VERY WHIMSICAL,  THEREFORE,  HOW CAN I MAKE THE LINES LOOK REALLY BLACK WITHOUT MAKING THEM LOOK THICK OR WEIRD? WHAT'S THE TRICK? (MAKE OS X & PHOTO 7.0)I REALLY DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING IN PHOTOSHOP!
THANKS LIZAL!

Answer
Hi Viki,

One of the reasons your scanned line drawings don't look really black is because a line drawing, when it's scanned and turned into an electronic document, becomes what's known as a vector graphic.

Vector graphics are those kinds of images that are made of lines. They're typically done in a drawing program, one that's geared toward creating this type of drawing. Generally speaking, drawing programs have tools like pencils and pen tools that draw lines, and you don't usually find an eraser in the tool box.

Photoshop, on the other hand, is a bitmap program. This means that images that are brought into or created in Photoshop (like a scanned graphic) are translated into hundreds of tiny dots, as opposed to a line drawing -- which is just lines.

So when your scan gets into Photoshop, it's converted from the neat sketch you did, into many little pixels -- and no longer the clean, crisp lines that you drew on paper.

The good news is, you can make your lines darker in Photoshop; but the bad news, it's not really easy, or too effective. But let me try and give you a little help, and also a couple of alternatives to using Photoshop for this.

First, the help:

1. The higher the resolution you scan with, the more dense your drawing will be, and the more you'll have to work with. So try and scan your sketches at 300dpi, and as color, even though they're black ink.

2. With your scanned image open in Photoshop, select the Magic Wand tool from the tool box. This tool is the second from the top, in the right-hand column of tools.

3. Click on a tiny portion of one of the skinny lines in the sketch. Then go to the Select pulldown menu, and select Similar. This will make Photoshop select all the skinny lines that are similar to the part of the one you clicked on -- and that will probably be most of your sketch.

4. Now go back to the Select pulldown menu, and select Expand. You probably won't need to make this more than 1 or 2 pixels. When you click OK, your selected lines will all "grow."

5. Go to the Edit pulldown menu, with the lines all still selected, and select Fill. Make sure your foreground color is black, and in the Fill dialog box, make sure you're going to fill with the foreground color. Once you click OK, all your selected lines will "grow" and be filled with black.

6. When you're finished, go back to the Select pulldown menu and select Deselect, and you're all finished!


Watch this little movie and you'll see how I did it (it's kind of a large movie, and it might take a little bit to load):

http://little-works.com/all_experts/lines.mov


Now, this is one way of strengthening lines in Photoshop, but as I mentioned earlier, Photoshop really isn't the best program for drawing and editing with lines.

You might consider buying a drawing program, and if so, I'd suggest one of the following:

1. Macromedia FreeHand
http://www.macromedia.com/software/freehand/?promoid=home_prod_fh_082403

If you go to this page, you can download a trial version of Studio MX, of which FreeHand is a part:

http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=studiomx


2. Adobe Illustrator
http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/main.html

This is another great vector-based drawing program, one that incorporates some bitmapping capabilities, as well.

You can download a trial version of Illustrator, too:
http://www.adobe.com/products/tryadobe/main.jsp#product=27


3. Something else you might consider, if you do a lot of drawing and want to get your drawings into an image-editing program, is buying a drawing tablet for your computer. Wacom makes some great ones, and they're relatively inexpensive, too:
http://www.wacom.com/graphire/index.cfm

I've got one of the Graphire tablets, and they're fun and easy to use, too.



Good luck and hope this helps! Let me know if you need for me to clarify anything.

Lisa


P.S. More good news: You don't have to know everything about Photoshop in order to have fun with it!