How to Extract Lines from Traditional Drawing with Photo or Scanner

Today you will learn how to convert your traditional drawings into digital ones, either because you prefer to draw traditionally and want to see how it would look with digital color or because you don't have a tablet or find it difficult to draw on it.

 

The process is very simple and if you follow each step everything will go well and you will be able to digitize your drawings whenever you want!

Step 1

We will need a traditional drawing, preferably one with black and legible lines, since if they are not legible enough you may lose part of the image or details of it.

In my case I will use this one that I made in my sketchbook of my OCs

Step 2

Since we have the drawing that we want to use, if it was a cell phone photo we will have to increase the contrast and illumination so that it looks as clear as possible and this can be done directly on the cell phone or in Clip Studio. In my case I did it directly on the cell phone.

Step 3

Now we move on to Clip Studio, in my case using the iPad version but the PC version also works because it is the same.

Step 4

Now with our drawing layer selected we go to the layer properties panel.

Step 5

Now in this panel we change from COLOR mode to MONOCHROME mode

and now in monochrome, we click on the black box so that it is only the black color in the image, and if we hide the white layer of the background we can see how we only have the lines.

Step 6

Now we just need to erase any imperfections that we don't want in our image, in my case it's the background under the notebook.

Step 7

Now in this last step we only have to color our drawing!

and after a few hours testing colors and experimenting this was the result, which I also ended up turning into a mini print to take to conventions!

I hope you find it very useful and that you enjoy the process!