Welcome to the Photoshop Lineart Tutorial. This is the first tutorial I've had time to write in quite a while (probably about a year... eheh...) and it was sort of spawned by several questions about this subject appearing on the message board at once. The old (and I do mean OLD tutorial for doing lineart in photoshop is... well... bad advice as far as I'm concerned now. I would highly recommend that you not use the "line tool" to make lineart. It was a technique that worked for me, but I rarely see it work well for anyone else, and the techniques I'm going to cover here are far more effective.
Anyways, this tutorial is all on one page, I didn't seperate it into multiple pages mostly because I was a bit too lazy to bother. It *may* simplify in printing it out, if that's what you choose to do, but I don't make any garuntees. In any case, there are a LOT of images, so it will probably take a while to load the whole page on slower connections.
Just to let this be known, I always use adobe illustrator to create my digital lineart, but I realize that a lot of you probably don't have access to illustrator, so I'm giving this alternative method for photoshop. This will work on Photoshop 6 and up. All versions. In fact, you can even do all of this on photoshop 4 or 5, but most things will be in different locations, and the shapes won't be available. The pen tool, however, has not changed in many versions. I'm sure that Photoshop Elements also allows for this tutorial to work perfectly fine.
This Tutorial was Completed on 12-14-03.
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Setting Up We start with the scanned image. If you scan your lineart and it's too light and you can't see the marks, I suggest you adjust the image levels and the brightness and contrast levels. The methods for doing this are described in virtually every other computer tutorial on this site, and I'm sure you can find it in one of them. The Lineart Clean-up tutorial, specifically covers this topic.
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I prefer to have a white background layer with the pencil sketch on it's own layer. This allows me to turn off visability of the pencil sketch and see the paths I'm drawing without the interfearance of the pencil marks. First we need to duplicate the background layer that has your pencil sketch on it.
Click and drag the background layer over the new layer button, or go to Layer > Duplicate Layer. Double-click on THE NAME of the layer and it will let you rename it. Call it Pencil Sketch (or whatever you'd prefer it be named for organizing purposes). If you double click on the layer and a window comes up, just close it, and make sure that you double-click on the words next time.
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Now we want to clear the background layer. Make sure you are on the background layer (click on it so it's highlighted) Select all (Ctrl+A or Select > All) and then go to Edit > Fill. Make sure it's filling the layer with white and click OK.
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To make sure that you don't forget later on, and end up putting your lineart on the same layer as your pencil sketch, create a new layer (click on the new layer button in the layers window, or go to Layer > New > Layer (or Shift + Ctrl + N). Name this layer Lineart.
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Creating the Paths
Getting to know your friend: the pen tool.
The pen tool is a vector graphics tool, which means you draw a path that is controled by points and anchors.
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Each time you click-and-drag with the pen tool, it creates a point, and as you drag out, it creates the anchor. The angle, and length of the anchor controls the size and shape of the curve that comes from the point.
If you don't drag, you just click, it'll make a hard edge, and there will be no soft curve in the line. When you first draw with the pen tool, it seems the only way to end a line is to close the shape, but this is not the case. If you want to end a path without making a closed shape, simply hold down the control key, and click somwhere away from the path. This will end the path, and allow you to start a new one.
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The best part about paths is that if you mess up, you can go back and fix it. I make sure that I have my History window open for when I need to just go back a few points to redo something (Windows > Show History), but you can also easily edit the points and anchors individually after you've created them.
 Using the Direct Selection Tool, you can drag around points to select them, and then click-drag them to new locations. You can also click-drag on the anchors to move and adjust them.
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If you want to break an anchor (have the anchor on one end of the point going one direction, but have it bending at a hard angle and going another direction out the other end) hold down the ALT key and click and drag on the anchor you want to break in a new direction.
While using the pen tool, holding down alt key and clicking on a point will delete it's anchors and it will just become a single point. This will remove the smooth curve and replace it with just a hard angled edge. While using the pen tool, if you hold down Ctrl, it will switch to either the Direct Selection Tool or the Path Selection tool (depending on which you last used) and will stay that as long as you are holding down the Ctrl key. You can use this to quickly edit a point or anchor while in the process of creating a path, without having switch tools, or stop creating the path you are on. |
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The more you play around with the pen tool, the more accustomed you will become to using it. Short-cut keys can play a large role in successfully using this tool. The Alt-key does a lot in the pen tool world, and you should experiment to learn all of it's uses. The more you use the pen tool, the more natural it's use will become. Once you've used it for a while, you just know where the points should be created and how long the anchors should be to get the curves and shapes that you want. The first few times using this tool will probably be frustrating, and will require a lot of "undo's". Just keep trying and you'll get the hang of it. |
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The pen tool is not the only vector graphics tool in Photoshop. All of the shape tools are vector graphics as well. On the boddice of this character's dress, I have a set of circles and drawing each of these with the pen tool would be tedius and time consuming. So in this area I decided I would use the Cirlc tool in vector graphics mode.
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Next to the pen tool are the shape tools. Hold down and they will all extend out. For this image, I choose the cirlce tool. Along the top options bar, make sure it is set to the middle option (Paths) so that the circle will be drawn as a path just like all of the lines you made with the pen tool. |
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I finished every path that was just a line (we'll do any filled in shapes after this part.) Each of these paths will later be converted into a rasterized line made of pixels instead of paths. In order for you to get actual lines over the paths, you need to "stroke" the path using another tool in photoshop; in this case, the paintbrush tool.
 Switch to the Paintbrush tool and right click anywhere in the image for the brushes to appear, or drop down the brush sizes from the top option bar. From here you can see how thick the brush will appear over your paths and be able to choose the best size for your image. I generally use either 2 or 3 pixel brushes. |
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Now that you've set the paintbrush to the appropriate size, go back and choose either the pen tool, or the path selection tool and right-click in your image. (Make sure you are still on your Lineart Layer and not on the layer with the pencil drawing). A drop-down menu will appear with a set of options for yout to choose from.
Choose Stroke path and another window will pop up with a drop-down menu that lists all of the tools that you can stroke a path with.
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 Choose the Brush tool from the list and choose OK. What this does is it traces all of the vector paths you have drawn using the tool you've choosen. In this case, I simply did a universal stroke of all of the lines. Because I applied "stroke" to all of the paths at once, they all have the same line weight (thickness) but another option that you have is to select specific paths at a time using the Path Selection tool and right-clicking and choosing "stroke subpath" which will only apply the paintbrush to the selected paths. With this in mind, you can stroke some lines with a thinner brush size, and others with a thicker brush size depending on the hiearchy of the lines you want to establish (Say you want the outer border lines to be thicker, and have some small detail lines be very small and thin). It all varies depending on the piece you are working on and what your goals for the picture are. |
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You can save a path by going to the paths window and double-clicking on the Work Path. This will bring up a box to save and name the path. Once you've saved the paths you can go back to them over and over again if you ever decide to change and restroke something. If you do not save the paths, deselect them, and start drawing paths again, the old work paths will be lost and the new ones will replace them as the Work Path, so it is important to save any paths that you may need to come back to later.
After you've stroked the paths, they are still visible in photoshop and it can make it difficult to see if you need to make any changes. To hid the paths (but not delete them) simply click on some empty space below the path you're on and it will deselect and hide the paths. |
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The next step I take is to select any shapes that will be filled in, instead of stroked. This almost alwasy includes the eyes, often the nose, eyebrows and sometimes the mouth. In this case we will be creating closed shapes, instead of just lines. When you get to the end of a shape and go to click on the first point, it may have an anchor extending out the back that will effect the shape in a negative way. In this case, you should hold down the Alt key when you make the final click on the starting point to close the shape. This will delete the old anchor extending out the back and allow you to just close the shape, or drag a new anchor from there. If that didnt' make any sense, just try it out and you'll probably get a better idea of what I'm talking about. Experiment with drawing a closed shape, and what the differences are if you close it while holding down Alt, and while not. You should get the idea. |
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Once you've created the shapes that you're going to fill, right-click in the screen, and choose Fill Path. The the eye outlines, and pupils I fill with black, but when I come back in with the white highlight (I do this in the lineart before I even start to color the picture, if you choose to, you can do this later when you're coloring the image) I fill with white. You can set the color you're filling with in the fill window, or you can simply set the color picker to the correct color before choosing the option to fill (this is usually simplier so I recommend just picking the color before hand). |
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Once all of your lines are done, and the shapes are filled go over the image and look for anything you need to fix. I personally prefer to go over several of the lines with the eraser tool and shave down the blunt edges to points. I use one of the harder edged brushes since it will create a cleaner edge. |
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And we're done. Ready for coloring, or whatever you choose to do with it. If you wish to download the photoshop file of this tutoiral, simply click the download link below. It contains the original pencil sketch as well as all of the paths I used for the lines. You can practice doing it yourself, examine my paths, or use this lineart for coloring and/or lineart practice. Which ever you'd prefer. You can post it to show people your coloring practice and get feedback, but please leave the credit in the image.
I hope this tutorial helps you out in some fashion.
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