Comic Genesis Forums

How do you USE it? I tried making a comic with it, and I had to do more erasing on the computer than if I did black and white then erased by hand. And the blue WONT erase! I cant do a 'mass erasing' on the paper because Iw ork in pencil (And no, I WONT ink). Is there a trick to making it go invisible? I try not to push too hard but its tricky cause if I dont push hard then I cant see it to trace it with the other pencil.

I just thought of something - I scan in Greyscale. Could that be why its showing up? I prefer scanning in greyscale cause if I dont, even my black and white pencil art ends upi yellow, red, green in places....

Yup, scanning in grayscale defeats the whole purpose of using the blue pencil. What you need to do is scan in color, then in Photoshop go:

Menu --> images --> hue/saturation

Then where it says "Master", click on the little arrow to make the dropdown menu appear. Click on "Blue" then position the brightness to 100%.

If the other colors are just unwanted noise, do the same thing with those colors (ie. click cyan, green etc on the dropdown menu).

If the other colors are actually part of your lineart, then just move the brightness arrow to 0% rather than 100%.

If your lineart turns out somewhat grey and washed out looking, go:

Menu --> images --> levels

Move the middle arrow closer to the right, and the left arrow a little to the left.


... Now here's hoping you actually use Photoshop ^^;;

If not, I'm assuming the program you use has similar tools ... but I won't be able to help you cuz all I use is PS.

I try not to, because it screws up the size of the image. For some reason the same number of pixels in Photoshop isn't the same as the ones in Paint, and I dont feel like rescanning ALL my images again. Its impossible to match it up, even by size of inches! Six inches in paint !=six inches in photoshop. Mrrr.

Don't use Paint. Use Photoshop. Always use Photoshop.

There are other ways of doing it. I believe scanning in bitone won't pick up the blue.

Paint is the only program that allows me to color things pixel by pixel without fuss.

o_@?

Then quit coloring pixel by pixel.
Work in 4 times the resolution (ie. if you want 500*500 pixel image, work on 2000*2000px one), and then even if you miss a couple of pixels they'll usualy disappear when you resize it to the final size.

I didnt mean LITERAL pixel by pixel. But paint lets me erase and do things that the other programs cant. Hell, just drawing a LINE in Photoshop in segments causes like two thousand 'vector' things to be made, and cut and pasting is a pain in the butt.

I guess I'm just not a good cartoonist then.

Can't say a word about Photoshop, because I use PSP...

but in PSP all the tools have options, ie. line tool can be set to vector or bitmap mode.

About the copy-pasting thing ...
well, I guess some things are different in different programs, but there are thousands of people that have no problem with pasting in Photoshop. You only have problems with it because you use Paint all the time.
Try using Photoshop for one week.
And reat the manual.

I tried photoshop for several months. I did read the manual. And the help files. I did not use paint during this time.



I hated it.

when I do the click-drag thing, it sticks it RIGHT where I drop it. I can't move it or anything. That file with the speech-bubbles in it is a pain to use because I have to guess at what size to open it to get it to be proportional, otherwise its all jagged. I just find it more trouble than its worth for my artwork.


Maybe its me, maybe its the program, I dont know, I dont care. Its not like I'm doing EVERYTHING in paint from rough draft to finished product... heck, the only things I do in paint is touch ups (erase smudges and clear up letters a bit) then save and then convert. IT doesnt make my art any lesser than anyone elses.

Go through my archives. All of those, I fixed up with paint. Hand drawn and lettered, then scanned in and cleaned up and the lines added. That's all I did in Paint.

This argument is pointless though. You like photoshop, I like paint. It doesnt make me any less of an artist, just like not Inking makes me any less of an artist or cartoonist

I'll just toss out my blue pencil and go back to my black one. This isn't worth it.

I'd second Yarpsdat's Paint Shop Pro recommendation. It is not the same thing as Photoshop, and it lets you draw lines like you describe. Far far more versitile than Paint, and it costs a fraction of Photoshop. You can download a free trial copy at jasc.com.

I think I have a copy of PSP somewhere. I'll look into it. If not I'll try the free version.

And sorry if I sounded upset in my previous post, but I was, but I shouldv'e held my tongue. *shrugs*

In photoshop there is no Brightness. There's just Hue, Saturation and Lightness.

Nevermind, I got it working. took a half an hour though.

Yes there is. It's Image -> Adjustments -> Brightness/Contrast

If you want to draw a line in Photoshop, hold down the shift key and click where you want the end points. If you want a straight horizontal line just hold down shift, click and drag your line. You can probably do a straight veritical line this way too.

If you want a word balloon that isn't going to mess with your head photoshop will do it (I think the GIMP does it better but I'm prejudiced there.):
1. Create a transparent layer for the word balloon below the text.
2. Use the elliptical marquee tool (the circular select tool thingy) to select around the text on the layer above.
3. Hold down Shift and use the polygon lasso tool to add the thingy that points to the character's mouth.
4. Bucket fill this black (or whatever color you like if you're into that whole design thing).
5. Select -> Modify -> Contract. Contract by 4 pixels (so a 300 dpi original will reduce to a smooth, 1 pixel border on the web version).
6. Bucket fill this white.
Tada. Word balloon.

If you want to work "pixel by pixel," put the line drawing on a layer above the color and then go wild. You won't hurt the lines by drawing on a different layer. Zoom in as much as you want to get really detailed. Zoom out as much as you want to be messy and artsy and stuff.

From the little I've used it, Photoshop has a lot better brush setup than the GIMP but it also has WAY too many useless options. So many of the settings do the same thing it's ridiculous. Anything that you can reasonably do in Photoshop you can do in the GIMP or PSP or whatever paint programs happen to be out there at the moment.

Anvil wrote: when I do the click-drag thing, it sticks it RIGHT where I drop it. I can't move it or anything.

I'm not sure what you mean, but you could try pasting as new layer.
Then you can move it around all you want.

If you paste anything in PSP, or drag a selection, it makes it a "floating selection", you can move it around, and once you get bored you could either:
defloat selection to merge it with the underlying layer
or convert selection to a new layer.

Anvil wrote: That file with the speech-bubbles [...]

I used to use a variant of the method faub described,
but now all I use is vectors
They make wordbubbles so flexible!
You can move, resize, edit and everything with no quality loss,

Anvil wrote: This argument is pointless though. You like photoshop, I like paint. [...]

Well, if you really like paint... whatever floats your boat, I guess.
But I think mastering an other program would just make you more flexible, and give you more options, and thus make your works better.

Of course it's all up to you...


BTW, I love PSP, but I can't stand Photoshop.
I tried, but I couldn't see any advantage over PSP (okay, it has more more filters and effects, but I never use thoes), but it was just... icky.
ie. I like to have one colour under LMB and other under RMB, so I can switch between black and white, or light/dark shade of colour instantly.
PSP has it, Photoshop uses RMB for menus, what gives?

YarpsDat wrote: Well, if you really like paint... whatever floats your boat, I guess.
But I think mastering an other program would just make you more flexible, and give you more options, and thus make your works better.

Of course it's all up to you...


BTW, I love PSP, but I can't stand Photoshop.
I tried, but I couldn't see any advantage over PSP (okay, it has more more filters and effects, but I never use thoes), but it was just... icky.
ie. I like to have one colour under LMB and other under RMB, so I can switch between black and white, or light/dark shade of colour instantly.
PSP has it, Photoshop uses RMB for menus, what gives?

Well, the thing about my art is that it needs very little computer editing. Mostly I just erase smudges and clear up lettering (and of course, do the non-photo blue pencil) so I dont really NEED a fancy program that does shading and all that confusing stuff. I do nearly all of it by hand, then the computer is my eraser/clarifier, and sometimes rotator (since my scanner scans crooked sometimes)

Hopefully I can remember how I got the blue to dissapear like last time.

PS - there's no Brightness on my Photoshop's hue/contrast menu. there's Lightness though. I found its the same.


So thanks for your help.

Adobe Photoshop is one of those programs that are horrible to learn, but are absolutely fantastic to use once you get the hang of it. I am continually amazed by what it can do... when I first started using it I hated it because it seemed so needlesly complex, but now 60% of my comic is done on Photoshop.

The problem with Photoshop is the learning curve and complexity. I've been using it for several years and I'm still learning something new every page I make.

(For example I learnt the shortcut keys (1-9) for the opacity levels yesterday: that's something I never knew before)

They say the best thing to do is stick with what you know best. Maybe you forgo the chance to learn something new, but then again at least you are producing something.