Question on coloring line art

[trialsze]

Hey guys and gals just wanted to see if anyone on here could help me with a problem I am trying to figure out. I run photoshop 7, yeah I know it is old but I am broke, and I was trying to do something new with my colors and I can't figure out how to do it.

When I scan my art in I am trying to actually color the lines that are black in the picture and not just the interior of the selected area. Not sure if that makes sense. Basically I am trying to give the art a more animated feel to it. Make the solid black lines of the art match the colors that I fill in the spaces

Any type of help would be appreciated.

An example of what I am talking about is a technique used by Sean Galloway. If that clears it up any.

[Metsys]

The best way to do it is to copy the image, paste it into a new channel, create a new layer, select the section tool, right-click, load selection, choose the new channel that you created (you'll need to click on inverse selection so the black lines will be solid), then fill the selection in with whatever color you want. To change the color of the line art just lock transparency on the layer to paint only the lines.

Add a layer behind the line art to the fill ins.

This also works really well for people who like doing graphite drawings and would like to color it in Photoshop, it kind of gives it a colored pencil look without the inconvenience of the real thing.

[sanakris]

To use this method usually your bg has to be clean or clean it up later. Go to >image > adjustments > hue/saturation and make sure you click the box 'colorize' and just move the sliders as you please.

The shortcut for this is ctrl u.

If the drawing is by hand on paper, another suggestion is to use blue non-photo lead, even though it's hard to scan in, it'll make the colors a bit easier to change and is a bit cleaner.

I hope this helps. :]