Of course i mean photoshop... i`m joking.

Ok, This may come in handy because it`s an easy and cheap way to color a drawing.

You got your drawing scanned then... I guess it looks damn dirty. we can fix that... a little.
Open your drawing in Photoshop And Turn it into BNW art by selecting IMAGE -> MODE -> GRAYSCALE. This will of course turn your art into BNW.

Cool. now let`s clean her up. Press CONTROL + L (or Function L on mac.) And the leveling box opens, move those three triangles until you have a clean outline and less details, play with it, it gives nice results on different images.

Great. now we have a clean image, look for a dialogue box that has 3 tabs called LAYERS, CHANNELS, and PATHS. Choose channels.

When you do, look for a button with a dotted circle as icon, (actually called, "Load channel as selection") and click on it. this selects the white colors in the image!.

Now go to SELECT -> INVERSE. Ta da! inverting the selection now selects the black outline!.

Cool, Press Control + C (to copy that outline)

Move to the LAYERS TAB.

Press Control + V (to paste) TWICE.

If the black outline layers look messed up, just align them manually to overlap one another perfectly.

There is a layer called Background and we do not need it, throw it away!.

Choose the layer on top, this one is going to be our outline, go then to EDIT -> FILL and select FILL WITH BLACK, and check the box PRESERVE TRANSPARENCY.

There, that last step converted all the outline in pitch black colors, as if it was ink.

Select the layer BELOW the Top one. This one is going to be the coloring, you can color using the brush tool or filling the areas, wich i do not reccomend. or any method you know!.

What was this good for? Well, lot`s of things, you are actually coloring BEHIND your outline so you won`t mess it up, Believe it or not this is quite useful and Is basic if u want to use cel style coloring.

You can color anyway you want, But for Cheapass effects that are quick to do, color on basic colors and use the BURN tool for shading and DODGE tool for highlights.

You could do Anime cel style coloring by coloring with basic color scheme, (whithout detail, just one color for skin for example) and calculating the shades and highlights with one chosen color per "part". i mean, in animation you usually choose one color for the skin, one lighter color for highlights (like in the nose or below the cheeks) and one darker color for shadows ( Like below the neck).

Any other doubt you may have about photoshop you can ask here or DC mail me, if you even want me to help you personally add me to your MSN chat using: wolfrun_psycho@hotmail.com

I DO hope this article is useful for someone, Heriberto Out, cheers!