When you scan your sketches and edit them in Photoshop, you may encounter the need to ‘lift’ the sketch from the paper. That is: you want your sketch in a layer of its own, including all transparency but without the white pixels of the paper. Here’s how.
Time: 30 minutes
Steps
- Open sketch.JPG in Photoshop and unlock the Background layer.
- Choose Select > All (CMD-A) and then Edit > Copy (CMD-C).
- Click the add mask button in the layers palette
- Hold down Alt/option and click the mask icon to make the mask visible
- Now choose Edit > Paste (CMD-V)
Some theory:
You’ve just used the image itself as a mask, so the pencil lines are now a greytone scale of visibility, where white is fully visible and black is fully masked (invisible). Since we want to hide any white pixels in the image, we need to block them using black pixels in the mask. So we need an inverted image.
- Invert the mask by Image > Adjustments > Invert (CMD-I)
- Click the layer icon and then Edit > Fill (Shift-F5)
- Set Contents to Black and click OK
Some more theory:
The image of the layer is now only black pixels. The mask is indicating the visibility of these black pixels. Since this is done in a greyscale, grey values in the mask will make the black pixels into half-transparent pixels.
- Now add a Solid Color adjustment layer (choose any color) and drag it below the sketch layer.
- For enthousiasts: Add a new layer between the two existing layers and use brushes to color in the eye (on this new layer).