Comic Genesis Forums

I keep hearing about it (actually, I've seen it done in red too..) Anyways, I tried it once.. It was kinda odd really. Didn't work too well. Is there a certain hardness you need to use? Am I just a moron? I mean I've seen like pictures that go from the prelim to the finished product, but they have no words. So, am I missing out on some magical secret?

I'm assumming you're talking about sketching the image out in blue first...
There are special pencils that are called non-repo lead pencils that won't show up in pictures and stuff. Personally I just use a light blue colored pencil because it's much cheaper and works the same when you adjust the levels of something.

Ah okay. That makes sense then..

I'm pretty sure most good graphics programs allow you to maks or block certain colors. YarpsDat told me a story about how he did this, you might PM him.

I think I recall him saying he scans his sketches, turn them blue, print, ink the prints and scan again.

Yes. I don't use blue pencil technique per se.
But I figure the rule is the same.
Of course you don't have to print in blue, you can just draw in blue pencil. I think it should be light blue, because when I printed dark blue it was bad. (now I print in light cyan, because printer uses CMYK, blah blah blah)

So anyways, let's say you have your drawings: black ink, and blue sketch. And you want to keep just the ink.

I use PSP7, it might be a bit different in Photoshop. (this should go in my sig )

1) Scan in colour mode.
2) Add a "channel mixer layer" set it so:
red:=blue
green:=blue
blue:=blue.

(select red, green and set them like this:)



The image will be black and white now.
Assuming your pencil was really blue, it will be invisible now.

2.5)IF your pencil is still visible, you can try this:
If it's bright enough just use curves/levels to remove the traces.
Otherwise might add another channel mixer, between the old one, and the scan layer, and then experiment with settings for the blue channel on that layer.
ie. set it to: 200%*blue-100%*green.

3) merge all layers.
4) turn into grayscale (saves 2/3 of memory)

Ahh danke, I see now. Hmm I don't have photoshop, but I think I can make it work on my photoshop/painting/editor generic program.

Does anyone know how to use blue line scanning technique using The Gimp? I cannot get rid of the blue lines after rescanning. Thanks for the help in advance. 8)

if the picture is supposed to be black and white can't you just use any color, then scan in black and white? Works for me

You know, if you can afford one (and I've seen places sell them really cheap), you might want to invest in a light table.

A light table, for anyone who does not know, is basically a surface you can place an image on and have extremely bright light shine through it. The effect of this is that almost anything can be traced without the use of tracing paper.This way, you can sketch out images using whatever you want on any paper you want, then place them on the light table and trace them into your final copy.

Another great point is that I don't have to draw my pictures in order...hell, I don't even have to put them on the same page. I just use the lightboard to place what I want where I want it. Especially useful if you need to do the same image (say, a background) over and over.

A really good investment, I'd say, especially if you don't have a decent image editing program.

There are special pencils called Col-erase that come in blue AND erase. I'd like to get some but they're hard to find not in red.

If you post a scanned image, I can try messing with it. I'm thinking that threshold will work (layers -> colors -> threshold)

I don't know how other image manip programs work, this is easiest method for Photoshop.
Scan in colour, right click and duplicate blue channel into a new psd. Done.

If GIMP has channels I imagine you can do the same.

Ryuko wrote:There are special pencils called Col-erase that come in blue AND erase. I'd like to get some but they're hard to find not in red.

I get mine from Misterart.com.