| Here are a few basic tips to help make coloring black & white line art easier in PSP. This tutorial was written with PSP 7 in mind, but it should work fine in earlier versions that support Layer Blend Modes and Adjustment Layers. The example images on this page are enlarged to show detail. |
Adjusting Brightness & Contrast
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When working with black and white images (especially JPG files), there are often stray gray pixels (as seen in the example to the left) that cloud the image and make it difficult to color. |
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By adjusting the Contrast of an image, you can get rid of those stray pixels easily. In the example to the left, I used a Brightness setting of 0, and a Contrast setting of 50 (this will need to be adjusted according to the image). |
| There are a couple of ways to adjust the Brightness and Contrast of an image. First, you can select Colors |Adjust | Brightness/Contrast (or press Shift + B) and alter the Brightness and Contrast settings in the dialog box that pops up. One alternative to this method is to add an Adjustment Layer (which is easier to correct because it's on a separate layer, therefore non-destructive to the base image). To add an adjustment layer, you select Layers | New Adjustment Layer | Brightness/Contrast and then enter the Contrast settings of your choice. I recommend using this method as the adjustment layer is easily modified or deleted without worrying about Undo-ing things later and losing a lot of work. |
Layer Blend Mode: Multiply
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This image shows the result of using the Magic Wand tool to select the white area of the base image and then flood filling that selection. As you can see, there are ugly gray and white pixels left out of the fill. The solution is to add a new layer (Layers | New Raster Layer) and change the Layer Blend Mode to Multiply. This layer must go above your base image (and can go either above or beneath your Adjustment Layer). |
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Instead of using the above method, I made a rough selection of the area I wanted to fill using the Lasso tool . Because coloring on a Multiply layer does not affect black, I don't have to worry about covering up the black lines. In fact, it's best if you include some of the black outline in the selection. An alternative to using the Lasso tool is to use the Magic Wand tool on the base image and then expand the Selection (Selections | Modify | Expand) enough to cover the area to be filled. |
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Making sure that the Multiply Layer is the active layer (highlighted), flood fill with a color, gradient or pattern. As you can see in the example to the left, the result is much better using the Multiply Layer Blend Mode method. |
Layer Blend Mode: Overlay
| Instead of using the Burn and Dodge Retouch tools on the base image layer (to add shadows and highlights), add a New Raster Layer and set the Layer Blend Mode to Overlay. Flood fill this layer with 50% gray (R 128, G 128, B 128) and use the Burn and Dodge tools on it. This method is non-destructive to the base image and can be easily modified (you can paint over mistakes using the gray color, use the airbrush or paintbrush tool to add highlights with white and shadows with black and/or change the opacity of the Overlay layer to modify its effect on the base image). |
| I hope these tips have been helpful for you in coloring your black and white line art images. |
Page modified: Feb 13, 2001
