INTRODUCTION TO LINE ART COLORING USING PAINT SHOP PRO 6

Introduction To Line Art Coloring Using Paint Shop Pro 6

Figure 1 This tutorial will cover some of the very basics of coloring black and white line art using Paint Shop Pro 6. With practice and lots of playtime with the tools in PSP 6 you should be able to color line art to a final picture like the one above in Figure 1. STEP 1. One of the more important steps of coloring line art is actually scanning the drawing in correctly. If your original drawing is 8.5” x 11” or smaller I would suggest scanning at 600 dpi with the scanner set on black and white or line art 2 color then save as a TIFF image or if you are using PSP as your scanner host just leave it as a PSP project file. If your drawing is larger than 8.5” x 11” then scan at 300 dpi set to 2 colors and save. These scan resolutions are high for printing purposes and to eliminate stepping on the edges of your line art. Later when you have completed your coloring, you will want to reduce the finished art to between 150 and 300 dpi for printing, and 72 dpi for computer use, such as a website. The reduction in the size of the line art actually tightens up all the black lines and colors for a really nice looking finished product. I would recommend saving all of your completed work as a LZW compressed TIFF image because your image will not suffer any degradation of color or line quality. Only save out to JPG or GIF if you intend to use your images on a website or BMP if you wish to use it as a background on your windows PC.

STEP 2. After you have your line art scanned into the computer your ready to start coloring, so lets jump in. Bring up your TIFF image in PSP 6. Next you will need to convert your image from 2 colors to 16 million 24-bit colors by selecting Colors on the tool bar and down to Increase Color Depth or by pressing Shft-Cntrl-0. Using the color dropper choose your first color (figure 2.). You can select a color from the color window on the right upper left (figure 3.) by running the dropper across the different colors and clicking on the one you like. You can also select colors in a more detailed window by clicking on the active color window (purple window in figure 3.) and selecting a color or blending a custom color (figure 4.). For detailed instruction on selecting color, refer to the PSP 6 User’s Guide Chapter 7.

Figure 2.

Figure 3. Figure 4.

You will want to drop in all your base colors first. Remember that as long as your line art has area’s that are completely closed with black lines you can just drop the colors in and won’t need to worry about colors bleeding into an adjacent area. If your line art has gaps or holes in it you will need to use the freehand selection tool and enclose the area that you wish to flood fill. One quick tip on base colors would be to choose a darker shade of the color you want the end result to look like. You will see why after we start adding in highlights. If your image size is very large you may want to select small area’s using the selection tool (figure 5.) and then drop in your colors using the flood fill tool (figure 6.). Be sure your flood fill is set to solid color in the Tool Option window (figure 7.).

Figure 5.

Figure 6. Figure 7. Below in figure 8 is a line art picture filled with all of the starting base colors. It already looks good but lets make it look great!

Figure 8. STEP 3. Now its time to create the first layer of highlights. In an effort to save space on this web page we will work with a small section of the super hero’s body. The same technique is used on the rest of the line art to bring out highlights and make the drawing look 3D. Using the freehand tool (figure 9.) and point to point settings set to Antialias and Feather around 30 or so (figure 10.) you will need to select an area you wish to drop your first highlight (figure 11.).

Figure 9.

Figure 10. Figure 11. Next select the flood fill tool again, but before using it use the Tools Option window to set the fill to Sunburst Gradient (figure 12.).

Figure 13.

Figure 12.

Clicking on the Flood Fill Options tab (the white, gray and black striped tab above in figure 12) then click on the Edit button (figure 13.). You will need to set the foreground and background colors that will be used by the gradient fill. In the center part of figure 14 below, click on the first marker on the long slider then click the Fore button, next click the far marker on the same slider and then click the Back button. Now your gradients will use the foreground and background colors you choose from the color window.

Figure 14.

More information can be found on the Gradient Editor in Chapter 9 of your PSP 6 User’s Guide. You are now ready to select the colors that you will use for your gradient fill. Remember when you selected your main color using the color window (figure 3), now its time to select the secondary color, which you can do by clicking on the background color square (the white window in figure 3). Select the same color as your foreground color then lighten the shade a few steps. Now your ready to drop in your radial gradient fill into the area you selected. Your results should resemble figure 15 below.

Figure 15. If the highlight is not to your liking, play with the colors, and the feather settings. Remember that the larger the number on feather the softer the edges of your highlight and the smaller the number the harder the edges. Try playing around with the other gradients also; they are all very powerful for adding different types of highlights for different types of lighting situations. Now that you know how to drop in the first layer of highlights, try to finish up the rest of your line art. Remember to always have the foreground color the original color and the background color set just a bit lighter. Lets move on to adding a second layer of highlights to the picture. First set your point to point selection tool feather to around 12 and mask off a smaller area towards the top of the current highlight such as Figure 16 below.

Figure 16. Now use your dropper and select the brightest color directly from the last highlight by clicking the dropper directly over the color. You will use this as your primary color. Next set your background color a few shades lighter than

the foreground color using the same process you used selecting the first set of colors for the first highlight. Now that you have the colors selected drop them in using your gradient fill and your line art should resemble figure 17 below.

Figure 17. If you would like, you can still add at least one more layer of color. Try reducing your feather down to around 5 and selecting a small sliver going across the top of the last highlight and filling it with the lightest shade of the colors you just used and changing the background color to white. You should have results the resemble figure 18. Remember that you can always use the Undo if you are not happy with the results and try adjusting your feather or color choices.

Figure 18. Now you know the basics of line art coloring. I would strongly suggest you play with all the gradient fills and different settings of feather. Get to know how using different shades of color can affect the way your highlights turn out. You might also want to add on little burst of white on top of your last highlight using the airbrush. Using the Layer feature is real handy when coloring line art. If you make all your highlights on a new layer and don’t like the way they look you can simply delete the layer also if your highlights are too strong you can always lighten them by scaling back the transparency of the layer. Layers are a very powerful tool and should be utilized whenever possible. I hope you enjoyed this short tutorial and I hope to have a book out soon with much greater detail and many of the tricks that some of the largest coloring studio’s use to bring line art to life.