Redrawing with the Pen Tool
If you are unfamiliar with the Pen Tool, please read an Intro to the Pen Tool. This tutorial will take what you know from the Intro and apply it to an actual manga page.
We’ll start with this panel:
First, if you’re doing HQ cleaning that requires redoing the gray areas, you’ll have to create a layer of gray that covers the gray area.
Next, reduce the opacity of the gray layer so you can see the original line art.
We’re going to start with the jaw line. Just like in the Intro to the Pen Tool, click the pen on one side of the line you want to trace. Then click on the other side, and a path will appear connecting the two anchors.
Click on the path in between the two anchor points to create a new point. Now hold down CTRL (CMD for Macs) and drag the new anchor point. Place the new anchor point so that the path overlays the line you want to trace.
Now right click and stroke the path (don’t forget to set the Brush Tool to whichever width you want to make the line).
And now we have a smoothly curving line! While the Pen Tool is great for curves, sometimes you’ll want to use the Line Tool (shadow lines on the neck) or Brush Tool (eyes).
But what if the line first curves up and then down? You’ll need more than one anchor point, and you may need to tweak the handles. Here is a series of screenshots of where I placed my anchors for this curve. I circled the anchors added in each step. (Sorry for the big pic, but I wanted to zoom in enough that you could see the path).
Alternately, instead of starting with anchors at the beginning and the end of the line you’re redrawing, you can place anchors as you go along.
Remember, the Pen Tool isn’t just for redrawing line art in gray panels. It can also be used to trace over broken lines or to create an artificially clean image to be colored.
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Once you feel comfortable making paths and using the Pen Tool, check out the next section!
awww thank you so much for explaining how to use the pen tool! this tutorial is amazing, seriously you know how to explain to newbie ! I have always hated the pen tool and was reluctant to learn how to use it, but as soon as I tried your tutorial, everything went so clear ! thankssssss for this tutorial !! *bows*
is there any other way to make the line art on the gray areas without redrawing?maybe some sort of tracing?
There are many speed groups out there that try to find way to do a quick redraw, and in many cases, they wind up looking better than the raw. But I have yet to see anything look half as good as a complete redraw. The best I can say is that some filters mangle line art less than others. Some people try to select the black line art on the grays, however this depends largely on the style of tone. If you have a plain gray, you can grab the black lines somewhat easily. But if you have gray tones that are made of black dots, trying to select black lines means you select black dots as well. If you can’t do a full redraw, you’ll probably have to decide on the best gray panel method for yourself depending on your series and your manga-ka. Good luck!
I’m new in Photoshop so I’d like to ask how to create the layer of gray? Thank you.
rosemaiden:
Press the f7 button to bring up the layers pallete & click on the “create new layer”. Tt is located besides the trash icon.
Or the quick way is using the shortcut Shift+Ctrl+N. :)
Just wondering, when redrawing the lines using the pentool. For brush stroke, what size do you use? For the brush, like 3 or 4?
It all depends on which line I’m redrawing. For a 3000 px high Bleach raw, I’ll stroke a normal line twice with a 2px brush. If it’s a thicker line, I’ll stroke with 3 px. Some of the finer lines and hatching will be 1.7 px with the line tool. I try to keep varying my lines with the raw, though, so the redraw doesn’t wind up looking all the same ;)