[1] Adjusting angles

Since the image was scanned at a slight angle, I will make adjustments to straighten the image.

 

When I select [Edit] menu > [Transform] > [Scale up/Scale down/Rotate], handles appear at the four corners of the image.

I drag the handle or enter a value in the [Rotation angle] displayed in the [Tool Property] palette and rotate the screen while checking the horizontal and vertical balance.

 

Note:

When you rotate the image, click the ruler (the measurement scale) at the upper left of the canvas and drag it down to make a horizontal guide line. This will give you a better understanding of the horizontal/vertical positions.

 

[2] Trimming

I’ll trim the image and adjust the canvas size.

 

(1) I select [Selection area] tool > [Rectangle], and encircle the line art with the square shape by pressing the [Shift] key.

Note: Press the [Shift] key while dragging to create a perfect square selection area.

 

(2) I select [Edit] menu > [Crop] to reduce the canvas size to the selection area’s size.

 

[3] Tonal correction of image

On the scanned image, the texture of the paper and the shadows of the scan are visible, which makes the extraction of line art difficult. Therefore, I will adjust the tone of the image.

 

(1) I select [Edit] menu > [Tonal Correction] > [Level Correction] and increase the contrast between the black line art and the white paper.

 

(2) Then, I select [Edit] > [Tonal Correction] > [Binarization] to create a black and white illustration without any anti-aliasing (grayscale).

 

I adjust the [Threshold] slider to find the best line width.

 

[4] Cleaning specks

I paint over any specks or unneeded lines in white with the [Pen] tool > [Marker] group > [Fill-in-mono pen] (with anti-aliasing off).

Note: If the [Anti-aliasing] icon of the [Tool Property] palette is set to the leftmost, then there is no anti-aliasing.

 

Note:

The [Remove dust] tool within the [Correct line] tool is also useful in this case.

You can set the [Tool Property] mode to [Delete point in white background] to deal with lines on a white background.

 

[5] Changing the color of the lines

(1) Since I want to paint the line art, I check that the [Layer Property] palette > [Expression color] is set to [Color].

 

(2) I click and select the line art using the [Auto select] tool.

Note: Since the line is binarized, if you check the [Tool property] palette > [Follow adjacent pixel], you can select all the line art at once.

 

(3) I pick dark blue from the [Color set] palette, and color the selection area with [Edit] menu > [Fill].

 

I will change the colors later on, so this is just a temporary color. Similar to the coloring stage, I often use a placeholder color from the color palette when I haven’t yet decided on the final color.

After that, you create a selection area using the same method as above, and apply tonal corrections to adjust the color to your preference.

 

(4) Since I want the line art to be slightly transparent and placed above the color layers, I set the layer blending mode to [Multiply].

 

Note:

When you want to color the lines of an extracted image, you can also make adjustments using the [Layer Property] settings.

 

If you click the [Layer color] button on [Layer Property], you can change the drawn parts of the layer to any color you like.

In addition, if you click the black square button next to [Expression color], you can edit the Expression color settings. If only the black button is selected, the white parts will be hidden and only the black lines will show.

 

In the next part, I’ll show you how I color my illustration.