[Aatiyki]

hey forum, a very newbie newb here.....

heh, don't laugh too hard if this turns out to be a ridiculous question (well not so loud that I can hear, heh)

but anyway, I just got Adobe Photoshop 7.0, and really, this is my first attempt to try and use it to upgrade my drawings, and it will come in handy (I hope) when I do some character sketches for a story I'm working on. I read on another site that offered a tutorial on how to use Adobe 5.0 or 5.5 to do it, and the directions pretty much worked on 7.0, but in order for it to come out correctly on Adobe, the author of the tutorial said to either ink your drawing before scanning it, or ink it once you scan before going on with adding color and all the other nifty highlights.
Now that I've told my story (lol sorry, but I'm kinda stuck on setting up my situations before I get to my questions, sorry to bore you if I am ) but how would I ink it on Adobe, or any other program that you all use. I saw Painter 7 mentioned, which I can't say that I've ever heard of, but it seems a lot of you use it interchangably with Adobe, so maybe that one is easier to use?
Anyway, hope someone can answer, or tell me that its really not possible and to just ink it before I scan, heh.

[Ian Jones]

Not a newbie question really, its kinda intermediate.

There are of course like most things a multitued of solutions to your question.

You could ink it first. Which if you are already good at it this way then stick with it.

You could also try inking it in a paint program like photoshop or painter, but drawing (even for digital illustration professionals) is a hard task to get really smooth lines when using a tablet. The solution is to work on a really big image drawing without worrying about your squiggly lines too much then when you have finished zoom out and you lins look smooth! its a simple principle. Here's a tip I have copy psted here from one of my upcoming websit tutorials:

Working Size:
Depending on the output of your final illustration, the size you should work at needs to be at least 150% larger than the intended final measurements. This means you will be able to shrink the image down when finished, effectively ironing out any minor mistakes and allowing you to work on smaller details because of your larger / zoomed in canvas. This is a common practice in traditional illustration where ‘finished art’ is usually done at ‘half up’ size.

Another way you can do it is with a 'vector' program like Adobe Illustrator, or Macromedia Freehand, or Corel paint. Vector graphics programs likes these work with mathematical information that defines where a line or shape is and what colour the printer should fill it with. This is different to 'raster' based programs such as Photoshop which use pixels to define images. The great thing about vectors is that they can be shrunk or enlarged without distortion that you may get when blowing up a raster / pixel image. I was just telling you that because I wasn't sure whether you knew the difference between 'vector' and 'raster'.

So using a vector program, specifically Adobe Illustrator you can draw your ink lines and the program can actually smooth out those lines for you! because it is mathematical. You can of course change these settings to make the program not alter you lines at all, or smooth out any and every kink or wiggle.

There are the 3 options you could investigate. I would suggest inking it on paper as a good and easy method. Investigate the others though, you may like them more. Do whatever works best for you.

Hope that helps.

[Atherium]

what he said.

[B0b]

its Photoshop not Adobe (they also make Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects, Acrobat, GoLive, LiveMotion and lots of others )

[Max]

quote

Quote:

what he said

read it

[Aatiyki]

Thank you Ian Jones, you're a pal.

I'll look into Adobe Illustrator sometime, and all your information is great stuff, thanks a lot.

[Frog]

That was a great post Ian

Personally I swear by illustrator for clean lines, it's very quick, the line quality is great and the tablet response is completely tweakable (as you explained so well). Another great plus of using illustrator is that the lines remain editable at all times, great if you want to revise your work.



[ September 11, 2002: Message edited by: Frog ]

[Ian Jones]

Glad I could help. have fun.