How to smooth and clean lines on a scanned line sketch?

[Yvrangel]

Howdy folks,

I've been trying to find a way to smooth out lines on a scanned sketch and google gave me a couple of options.  One is photoshop and the other is illustrator using vectors.  I watched the tutorials on how to create layers, bold the blacks and whiten the white pixels and how to use the pen tool, but after watching one such tutorial, it sounds like it will take four hours to simply convert a simple sketch into clean vectors.  I'm wondering if there is an easier way to do this.  The tutorial I'm referring to is below:

Step by step photoshop ink

Thanks for any information!

Ryan Angel

[zenia]

Personally, I don't think there is any easy way to "convert" a sketch into lines. I mean, you can play around with 'levels' in Photoshop on the sketch... but the best look will be to take the time to do it the long way. With enough practice, you can get inking down in no time. I use Paint Tool Sai, and to outline this picture took about 15 minutes. Sai has an awesome tool to use in conjunction with its linework tool... and that is a tool to change the weight of lines to give them a more dynamic feel.

[Haemish]

that sounds about right.
The way I see it, you have a few options:
1) Ink your drawings and erase the pencil sketch, then scan.
2) work with the sketchiness - it can look good too.
3) spent hours in illustrator.  If other people can do it, it's not impossible.
4) buy a wacom and re-trace in photoshop.

I do everything except 3, and I've had jobs where I've used illustrator all day.  For me, it's just too much time and outcome is little....clinical?  Formal?  Something like that.  I ran across a tutorial from a woman who makes comics (can't find it now, ugh) where she used Carsons translucent vellum to ink over her pencil & paper sketches, and scanned the vellum.  It looked like a good idea, and if you mess up it's easy to start over with a new sheet of vellum.

[Temrin]

If you do as Haemish said previous, inking and scanning, or if you want to take the lines of a sketch and make it easier to colour (taking the white away from the sketch/ink) then do the following:

Open your picture in photoshop
unlock the bg layer (your image should be on this layer)

CTRL+A (select all)
CTRL+C (copy all)
CTRL+X (delete selected from that layer)
CTRL+SHIFT+N (Create a new layer)

Make sure your forground colour in the colour picker is black.

Alt+Backspace (fills with forground colour. black)
Q (Not sure how to explain this.)
CTRL+V (Pastes copied inks/sketch)
Q
Backspace/Delete

this will transfer your inks or sketch onto a new transparent layer in which you can put layers under to colour. ^^

[Yvrangel]

Thanks for the advice everyone!  I downloaded Sai last night and boy, it was really useful as I created a layer, retraced my lines, created a blank page, merge the layer page with the blank page, and filled the empty spaces with colour and the program worked like a charm.  If anybody is reading this, you can download a free version by going on youtube, there's a video explaining how to do it.  Also, if anybody is interested, you can now see a few of my pieces in colour.  The one titled "Our Valentine's Gift" took five hours for me to trace and then colour, but the effort is well worth it!  Thanks Zenia, Haemish and Temrin!

Ryan Angel

Our Valentine's Gift (M/M/M action)

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/7327819