Need advice how to touch up my animation drawings.

[Eljay]

Hi,

I need advice on how to get the best results out of my animation drawings.

First I need to describe what I mean: The way I animate is the traditional hand-drawn series of drawings that I scan into my computer and then import into my 2D animation software Toon Boom Pro Animate Pro.

The drawings are drawn by a blue pencil(Col-erase blue). I do the rough drawings in blue, then erase it to a certain extent and do the clean black line on top of that blue sketch with a normal HB pencil. My old method was to just scan in the finished drawing in black and white.

The problem was that the blue line comes out as a black line and I always need to clean up the drawing in the computer. Now I had the idea to just scan in my original drawing in color and then filter out all the blue in Photoshop and then darken the HB pencil line.

I added the original drawing with the blue line that I scanned in in color and also the way the drawing looks if I scan it in in b/w(you can see the black smudges).

Can the Photoshop experts tell me how I can get the best results out of my color scan, filtering out all the blue and getting a clean crisp b/w line drawing without the smudges?

 

[HomePhotoshoppingNetwork]

Run Hue and Saturation on the scans with these settings…





You could also set up an action that would do this to your images in an automated way.

 

[HomePhotoshoppingNetwork]

You may also have to do a Levels or Curves adjustment if the above steps don't eliminate the blue lines completely.

 

[HomePhotoshoppingNetwork]

It turns out that Hue and Saturation doesn't quite do the job on its own…



A Curves adjustment like this will clear it up…

 

[Paul]

All i did was turn the image into a desaturated layer then pulled sliders from the black and white tab to loose all colours.
:mrgreen:

 

[chrisdesign]

Changed the image mode to Black and white to loose all color.
Changed back to RGB.With the curve tool I increased the contrast to absolute black and white.
Enlarged the image to 200%. I added Gaussian blur, 1 pixel, this is important to the next step.
Used TOPAZ CLEAN Filter, preset "cartooned".
This is the result.

View attachment 42720

 

[Paul]

We are good ain't we Chris, we are though ain't we

 

[hawkeye]

The word is "LOSE" not loose.

 

[chrisdesign]

The word is "LOSE" not loose.

Mhhh...my english! Still a foreign language to me.:banghead:

 

[hawkeye]

It's a common mistake made by native English speakers as well.

 

[Eljay]

I'm trying to post a response but I keep on getting error messages.

 

[Eljay]

The reason is that I need enough posts to post links even though my post doesn't have any links.

 

[Eljay]

1. Sorry, I have too much work at the moment to retype my whole previous post that was lost due to the error message.
2. Thanks to all your help.

I'll get back to it as soon as I have less work.

 

[Paul]

The word is "LOSE" not loose.

Thanks Tom:mrgreen:

 

[Eljay]

Hi,
I wanted to get back to all the posts now that I have more time.
Thanks to all for your tips.

@Homephotoshoppingnetwork: I actually tried out Hue/Saturation before I posted my question but to be honest, I wasn't too satisfied with the results. I tried out the curve adjustment to see if that improves it. I tried it out with Image>Adjustments>Curves but I'm not sure if it's the same function you used because it looks a bit different in my version:


I did play around with it and it looked ok. I'll need to experiment a bit more.

@Paul: Your version was quite hilarious. Can you explain a bit more how you did this

All i did was turn the image into a desaturated layer then pulled sliders from the black and white tab to loose all colours.

Thanks.

Changed the image mode to Black and white to loose all color.

@Chrisdesign: How do you change the image mode from RGB Color to b&W? I have the options Image>Mode> Bitmap, Grayscale, Duotine etc.

I don't really use Photoshop too often so many things that might seem obvious to others, aren't obvious to me:mrgreen: I appreciate the help.

 

[chrisdesign]

@Chrisdesign: How do you change the image mode from RGB Color to b&W? I have the options Image>Mode> Bitmap, Grayscale, Duotine etc.


Sorry my fault. Change from RGB (your first image) to Grayscale, then back to RGB.

 

[Eljay]

I actually thought that's what you meant but that makes the blue lines black. I would think it would be better to filter the blue out first and then work with the contrast.
I realized while experimenting a lot that there are several ways to get the job done. The suggestions here are good pointers to work from.

 

[Paul]

Hi,
I wanted to get back to all the posts now that I have more time.
Thanks to all for your tips.

@Homephotoshoppingnetwork: I actually tried out Hue/Saturation before I posted my question but to be honest, I wasn't too satisfied with the results. I tried out the curve adjustment to see if that improves it. I tried it out with Image>Adjustments>Curves but I'm not sure if it's the same function you used because it looks a bit different in my version:
View attachment 42760

I did play around with it and it looked ok. I'll need to experiment a bit more.

@Paul: Your version was quite hilarious. Can you explain a bit more how you did this


Thanks.


@Chrisdesign: How do you change the image mode from RGB Color to b&W? I have the options Image>Mode> Bitmap, Grayscale, Duotine etc.

I don't really use Photoshop too often so many things that might seem obvious to others, aren't obvious to me:mrgreen: I appreciate the help.

My original reply said it all really, the only addition i can think of is, i did a cheap shot addition via smudge tool to animate foot and tail, two frames one being your original the second my smudged foot and tail image.

 

[Eljay]

My original reply said it all really, the only addition i can think of is, i did a cheap shot addition via smudge tool to animate foot and tail, two frames one being your original the second my smudged foot and tail image.

I didn't mean the animated part you did as an extra. I mean how did you filter out the blue etc. You wrote that in your post but is there a way of explaining it in more detail. I don't use Photoshop very often so many things that are obvious to people who know most stuff are hard to understand for a noob like me.

 

[Paul]

I didn't mean the animated part you did as an extra. I mean how did you filter out the blue etc. You wrote that in your post but is there a way of explaining it in more detail. I don't use Photoshop very often so many things that are obvious to people who know most stuff are hard to understand for a noob like me.

I started by taking your mouse drawing and desaturating the image, i then went to image/adjustments/black and white, and pulled all of the colour sliders into the black region.