[PS Tutorial] Defringe your art!

I learnt this method from working at Les' Copaque Production Sdn. Bhd. As a concept artist, my daily life revolves around photoshop (I used it more than the time I turn on both my Pokemon games combined. #fact). So today I wanted to teach/spread the method of defringing outlines from our scanned/digitalized artwork. Don't know what's a fringe? View the picture above in full size to know more.

For today's tutorial, I've prepared a li'l somethin' for everyone so that everyone can follow exactly what I'm doing.

So as we all know, Adobe Photoshop is meant for raster images (but you can still use it for vector, no problem) Some comic artists prefer to create their line arts traditionally and scan it on the computer afterwards, doesn't sound that hard, eh? But then another problem arises, how to remove the white color from the paper? Well, that's where this tutorial comes in handy. I'm going to show you the method of Defringing edges.

 

 Here's the image I used to create this tutorial. Please link back if you ever decided to use this art.

Before I start, I usually prepared 3 layers, (from below) White layer, Black layer and Line Art Layer.

Select the Wand Tool, or press W and select the white parts. Delete it by pressing the 'Del' button (which stands for Delete... duh.)

After you've deleted all the whites, preview it with the second (black) layer. You'll notice on the edge there are some annoying 1px-width white fringes. This isn't bothersome if you're going for a black/white image, but if you plan to color it, and edit it (it's hard to manipulate the multiple layer style, so it's nice to have an outline without any layer style at all, it's more free that way).

 

Go to Layer -> Matting -> Defringe and just select the default setting. If you have the time, do experiment with it, but I see not much difference if I increase the number to 2 or 3.

There you go! The whites are pretty much gone! 'cept for some area where the whites are a tad too thick the software cannot delete it properly. So go ahead and fill everything in black!

Turn on the layer transparency lock (make sure you line art layer is selected!)

You'll see the screen turn pure black but don't be afraid, the transparency lock is on, so your art is safe. Next, just turn off your black and white layer to reveal the artwork without its white background!

Yaaay! you've finished defringing your line art. Basically no more white background and annoying white pixels! Now you can freely re-color or do whatever you want with the lineart.

If you have any questions or misunderstandings as such, don't hesitate to contact me at matsuoamon@yahoo.com or comment here!