Getting the Scan

Most people have different scanners, and different scanner software. I'll just tell you what I do with mine in hopes that it will help you out. If you have the whole scanning thing down, you can skip this part! :}

Hopefully you know how to use your scanner to some degree... put the drawing in there, push the scn button, etc. Once the scanner has done its job, there's a few things I do to get the scan ready to be colored.

- Set the resolution; high is good, but it'll eat more disk space. For colored pencil drawings and normal pencil drawings, I usually scan around 300dpi; if you don't plan on doing anything with your sketch, or don't care how clea ir looks, go with a lower resolution. Check off the option to rescan for higher res values, if applicable.

- Set the output type to best color photograph; this is easiest for me because once it gets sent to Photoshop then i don't have to mess around with color modes. If you're not going to color your sketch, though, black and white photo settings would be okay.

- Crop the scan; that's pretty self explanitory. Just select what you do want of the scan.

- Set the size (or you could resize once it's in photoshop) to whatever you want to work with.

Now send or import your scan into photoshop; however you get it there is fine.. hope this part helped a little.

So you got your scan there...

First of all, double click on the layer that the sketch is on (it is probably named "background" or "layer 1") and change the name to anything you'd like; I named mine "sketch", and click okay. This makes it so we can manipulate that layer..

Now then, does your scan look kinda light? Do you want to darken it a bit before we start adding color? I usually have to fiddle with it a bit to make it look right. To do this, go to Image -> Adjust -> Levels.... or just hit Ctrl + L. This should come up:

How to use the Levels: To be completely honest, I'm not exactly sure what the levels do, I just know that I can mess with them to get the desired results. Okay, you'll get a window like the one above. You'll want to have "Preview" checked so that you can see what's happening as you mess around (make sure your image is saved prior to this in case you don't like what you do). Try hitting "Auto" to see what the computer thinks looks best; sometimes it truley does look best. Most of the time, though, you'll want to mess with the sliders till you get your drawing looking how you want. I leanred what they sliders do by pure experimentation; you can too. The channel indicates what you're changing. RGB means what you do will effect all colors. The red channel lets you mess with the red hues only, same with the green and blue channels. The eyedroppers are useful, too! If you use the one filled with black, click on the part of your image that's supposed to be the darkest (black) and it'll automatically change the rest of the image accordingly. The same with the one filled with white; use that to select the brightest part of your drawing. The one in the middle is for midtones.

The Result

This is my scan before and after I changed the Levels. It shows how much nicer you can make your scan look!

"Multiply", and that's all I have to say about that

Next is to set the sketch layer to multiply. You do that by clicking on the little dropdown menu in the layers window. It is set by default to "Normal". Drag down until "Multiply" is selected. Multiply makes it so that when we color underneath the sketch, the dark lines of the sketch will show easily, but the white will not. Think of it like this: when we set the sketch layer to multiply, it's like making it a overhead projector-type transpanency. You can color underneath it because the white will act like it's not there. Threre's actually a very technical way of describing what these different layer settings do, but I'm not too bright in that rea. I just like to draw.

You shouldn't notice any visible change when you set it to multiply. But believe me, it makes all the difference.