Coloring Lineart

[pgraham]

try using screen instead of multiply.

[Elektrikgor]

If I use screen, it will only show the colors directly beneath the black of the lineart, and nothing else. I may have been unspecific about that in the original post, basically I have colors beneath the line art as well, but I just want to change the lineart's black to another color.

[hentsteph]

What I do is tranfer the line art from a layer to a channel. Inside the channel you can give the line art any color you want.

1. Open your line art and transform it into a grayscale (Image, Mode, Grayscale).
2. Go to Channels and make a copy of it (in the Channels tab right click on the channel, Duplicate Channel...).
3. Rename the new Channel (I name mine Drawing).
4. Reselect the first Channel and go to Image, Mode, RGB Collor.
5. Go to the Layers tab. Click on the Background layer and fill it with white.
6. Go to the Channels tab and select the drawing Channel. Double click it and in the Channels Options click Spot Color and select the color you want for the lines and the solidity.

Hope this helps...

[Elektrikgor]

Very cool! Is there an easy way to make more than one color on different parts of the lineart?

[hentsteph]

Not that I know of, but you can do selections on the channel.

You can, with the magic wand, select ither a white space (which you could fill with color) or the lines. If you select the lines go to the Layers tab, create a new layer and fill your selection with the color you want. Then erase the lines (the ones on the layer) where you don't want that color. You could do several layers like this. The only thing is if you keep the drawing channel visible you'll get black lines over the colored ones, so you have to color every part of the line channel on layers and make the drawing channel not visible for the final result.

[pgraham]

When you make a channel, you don't have to change the mode to grayscale and back if your lineart is in rgb mode. Just right click on any channel and duplicate it.

To apply multiple colors to the lineart, you need to make it a mask.
1. Go to channels palette. Ctrl-click (Cmd if mac) on a channel that has the lineart in it. This will select all the white parts of the channel.
2. Go back to layers palette. Create a new layer.
3. Choose Layer->Add Layer Mask->Hide Selection. This will create a mask on your layer that hides all the white parts of your lineart. The mask will look like an inverted version of the lineart.
4. Hide the layer with the original lineart on it so you can see the color of the new layer. It will be transparent so you won't see anything at this point.
5. Click on the layer thumbnail of the new layer and add your color. You can fill the layer with color, paint on it, or whatever you want, but color will only be visible where your lineart is.

Then you can make a layer under the lineart and color on it independently of the lineart.

[hentsteph]

When you make a channel, you don't have to change the mode to grayscale and back if your lineart is in rgb mode. Just right click on any channel and duplicate it.

To apply multiple colors to the lineart, you need to make it a mask.
1. Go to channels palette. Ctrl-click (Cmd if mac) on a channel that has the lineart in it. This will select all the white parts of the channel.
2. Go back to layers palette. Create a new layer.
3. Choose Layer->Add Layer Mask->Hide Selection. This will create a mask on your layer that hides all the white parts of your lineart. The mask will look like an inverted version of the lineart.
4. Hide the layer with the original lineart on it so you can see the color of the new layer. It will be transparent so you won't see anything at this point.
5. Click on the layer thumbnail of the new layer and add your color. You can fill the layer with color, paint on it, or whatever you want, but color will only be visible where your lineart is.

Then you can make a layer under the lineart and color on it independently of the lineart.

Nice, thanks...

[DrawT0000much]

There's an easier way cause I do this all day long.
There's 2 ways that I know of. One is to simply use your wand to select your white area on the layer, then simply delete it ( after you double-click the thumbnail to put it on it's own transparent layer ). You can then lock the transparency for that layer and paint right over the black line. You can also go to Layer>matting>defringe if you have a slight white haze around your black line.

The second is to double-click the layer to bring up the effects menu. At the bottom of the blending options menu you'll see 2 sliders under the "blend if" drop down menu.
Leave it on grey and on the top slider, move the righthand handle to the left till the white areas dissappear. Only move the slider till all the white is gone and not till you start to loose your line antialiasing.
Once that's done you can just create another layer and merge them together which will lock in the transparency.

[pgraham]

Masking is easy enough for me. My personal method is a little faster than the step-by-step I posted before:

ctrl-a, ctrl-c, q, ctrl-v, q, alt-click the add layer mask button.

masking gives you a pixel perfect copy of the lineart, and makes gray tones translucent. You can also mask a layer set or adjustment layer.

[BJMonkey]

I personally like to create a new, solid colour layer and make a layer mask on that layer, using the same quick mask thingy pgraham showed.

That way you can then colour in the solid colour however you want and the lines colour will change with and you know that you're not going to affect the actual lines transparency, etc...
Well, i prefer it :)

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