Lifting ink off a page

[tlintern]

Hi,

I am working on a comic book and want to scan in finished inked art and get it in its own separate layer and delete the white so I can place the color behind it.

In the past I have used Select/Color Select I believe its called ( I'm not on my home computer right now) Since my inked work is only black and white all I have to do is select the black with the eyedrop tool in the Color Select menu and it lifts about 95% of it. I then copy and paste it on a new level. It does not select all of it though so when I delete the layer beneath it is not smooth and some of the smaller details are lost.


Anyone know of any better methods?
Thanks a bunch!

ps I have also considered printing my inked work on acetate and placing the color art behind it and scanning the two together but might lose quality that way

[invinciblewombat]

duplicate the scan, set the duplicated layer to multiply, color on a new layer below it or on the background, multiplying makes white transparent and the black solid. adjusting the levels helps to clean up any pencil marks or smudges lying on the page still, giving you cleaner looking inks and making this method more effective.

[Anid Maro]

In addition to what the InvincibleWombat said, you can also play with the channels if you're interested in coloring the lineart.

Go to your channels tab and duplicate the Blue channel (presuming you're working in RGB) and make a new layer. Then go up to the Select menu and choose Load Selection. Once there, go to the channel drop box and select Blue Copy and make sure to check the Invert checkbox.

Then select a nice solid black (or blue, yellow, whatever) and press Alt-Backspace to fill in the whole selected area.

And there you go! A nice black ink layer with no white area. The reason to do this over using "Multiply" is if you want to color your inks as well. If you aren't, well "Multiply" is much simpler then.

[Kweckduck]

You can make it one step faster by just making an inverted copy of the blue channel (you just need to mark the option), loading the selection (on a new layer) and filling it with black.

[tlintern]

Awesome! Thanks guys! Really appreciate the tips.