Comic pencils into the blue

[Dunk!]

Being given access to a rather good printer has made me decide to try printing my pencils onto bristol board in none print blue (like I've heard dem pro types do) before inking rather than rubbing/smudging them out as i go along.

Can anyone suggest any articles or websites where they mention the best way to prepare your pencils for such printing?

Cheers in advance,

Luddite Dunk!

[radiator]

I wouldn't mind a few tips on this - the only way I've found online is to change the linework to cyan with hue/sat, then use hue sat to get rid of them when you scan the inked image back in.

However once I do this I can never quite get rid of them completely.

[Jim_Campbell]

I wouldn't mind a few tips on this - the only way I've found online is to change the linework to cyan with hue/sat, then use hue sat to get rid of them when you scan the inked image back in.

However once I do this I can never quite get rid of them completely.

Select -> Color Range

Pick up the black with the eye dropper, set the fuzziness to zero. Select -> Inverse. Delete.

Cheers!

Jim

[Smarty]

Personally the cleanest way to do it is to set your image mode to duotone and put cyan 20% in the box. Your image needs to be in grayscale mode first before duotone.

[radiator]

Select -> Color Range

Pick up the black with the eye dropper, set the fuzziness to zero. Select -> Inverse. Delete.

Surely doing it that way is a little destructive to the linework?

[dyl]

the way I do it is,
convert greyscale to rgb
then bring up the hue saturation lightness box (ctrl-u)
tick the colourise box
then
hue: 180
saturation:100
lightness: 80-100(up to you this one)

works for me!

[radiator]

the way I do it is,
convert greyscale to rgb
then bring up the hue saturation lightness box (ctrl-u)
tick the colourise box
then
hue: 180
saturation:100
lightness: 80-100(up to you this one)

How do you get rid of the blue lines after you scan?

[dyl]

do a colour scan, then got to the channels select the blue channel and all the blue should disappear. Then convert the image to greyscale and PS will ask you if you want to discard all the other channels. Say yes and you should end up with clean linework!
did a post on it here
http://dylansdrawingboard.blogspot.com/2009/01/blue.html

[radiator]

Nice one, cheers.

[Jim_Campbell]

Surely doing it that way is a little destructive to the linework?

Strictly speaking, the linework shouldn't be anti-aliased -- it should be absolute B&W with no soft edges, since this makes for clean selections when colouring. In which case, no, it shouldn't knacker up the linework.

Cheers

Jim

[Gibson Quarter]

In Photshop...here's what I do.

Flatten image
converst to CMYK
Select all -Ctrl A
copy  -Ctrl C
Cut   -Ctrl X
then go to channels  and pick ONLY Cyan
Paste -Ctrl V
then go back and selct all cmyk layers  and you'll see it blueline.

From there make a new layer and print at whatever opacity you wish to see the lines.

Hope this helps!

[radiator]

Strictly speaking, the linework shouldn't be anti-aliased -- it should be absolute B&W with no soft edges, since this makes for clean selections when colouring. In which case, no, it shouldn't knacker up the linework.

You must work a completely different way to how I do then! If I push my linework so hard it goes to pure b&w it ends up looking very harsh and shreds the lines, ruining the artwork.

[Jim_Campbell]

You must work a completely different way to how I do then! If I push my linework so hard it goes to pure b&w it ends up looking very harsh and shreds the lines, ruining the artwork.

If you're colouring yourself, it doesn't really matter and there are many working techniques that accommodate this. In many comic book workflows where the colours are likely to be handled by someone else, the inks have to be bitmap: 2-bit B&W. Even if they're not, the first thing the colourist will do is bitmap 'em to enable clean selections for flatting and accurate trapping.

Cheers

Jim

[Dunk!]

Quick retro post to say thanks for all the advice.

Used Mr Teague's method and now have some lovely smooth A4 bristol boards with cyan pencils printed on them which, so far, have been a joy to ink. No rubbing out, no grey smudging as I work. Just great.

Now just have to look into a printer of my own.

Cheers again,

Dunk!