Click on image - BIG video will open in new window

I'm coloring the line art on SpongeBob in today's Adobe Photoshop tutorial video. Most of the steps are the same as they were for coloring Patrick in the previous video... but since repetition is the mother learning, I think that'll help to see it all once more on a different character.

The way I select all the line art on SpongeBob is to use the magic wand tool on the clear background.

This selects all of the clear areas of the canvas... but then I use the inverse command from the selection menu to flip the selection to SpongeBob's line art only.

I imagine there is an easier way to do this, but this screwy little method has always worked for me.

The advantage of having all the line art selected is that I can go over it with a big fat color brush, and I don't have to worry about going outside of the lines. I still have to use the brush tool (rather than the paint bucket) because not all of the lines are painted the same color.

Another key tool that I use frequently is the eyedropper. The eyedropper tool lets you sample colors from any place on the canvas.

I usually import a small reference drawing of the characters I'm working on so that I can quickly grab any color I need to. This is especially important for licensed characters that have a very specific and unchanging color scheme.

As an added audio bonus: about one minute into the video, you get to enjoy the sound of an ambulance siren passing by outside my window. It adds a little bit of real-life drama, doesn't it?

I'm not a big fan of using Photoshop as a painting tool, but it's definitely my go-to graphics application when it comes to image manipulation and coloring simple flat line art. Only the outlines are going to be colored in Photoshop -- all of the fills and background art will be painted in ArtRage 2.5, a wonderful painting program that beautifully simulates the look of natural media like oil paints and pastels.

And the three best things about ArtRage 2.5? It's super simple to use, it's ridiculously inexpensive, and it produces results that are good enough to allow me to continue painting covers for one of the most successful magazines in America. Stay tuned, because with the very next video, we will start a brand-new series on digital painting with ArtRage 2.5!

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...and to catch up on the previous tutorials:

#2 - Palette Options and Settings

#4 - We Start INKING in Illustrator!

#5 - How to Use Shapes & Ellipse Tool

#7 - Working With Reshape Tool and Layers

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Here the YouTube version of the video in case you're having any trouble with the high-resolution video at the the start of this page:

Click on image - BIG video will open in new window

Some people use Photoshop channels to isolate the line work, making it easier to color only the lines. I have never really understood how to use channels. It's probably not very difficult, but I seem to have a mental block against it. Every time someone tries to explain channels to me, my eyes glaze over in my brain gets vapor lock.

I have my own crazy system for isolating the line artwork: Use the magic wand tool to select the background (every thing that's not the line work)...

...then use the invert command under the selection menu to invert the selection.

Every thing that was selected is now not selected, and every thing that was not selected before is now selected. You know something is selected when it has those dashed lines moving around like marching ants.

Now all of the line work is selected. Next, I use the eyedropper tool to sample the character's color off of the model sheets.

When you're working on characters that have a consistent color design, you can't just guess at the color. It has to be perfectly on model 100% of the time.

Now, when something has selection lines around it, that becomes the only area that can be worked on in Photoshop. If you paint over a selection, the paint will only stick to the area that is selected. So no matter how sloppy you are, it is impossible to color outside the lines when you're working on a selection. This is a great feature because it lets you color the line work really fast and loose, but it always looks perfect when you're done.

The only dangerous thing about using selections is when you forget that something is still selected. If there is a small area on your canvas with a selection around it, you can't paint or draw or do anything else outside of that small selection area. This is one of the most common causes of "Total Photoshop Roadblock." Nothing seems to work anymore!

So make sure to always deselect your selections after you're finished working on them. You can go to the Select menu and choose "Deselect," or the quicker ways to use the keyboard commands: Command+D on Macintosh, and Control+D on Windows.

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In case you missed them,

here is the COMPLETE list of all eleven

#2 - Palette Options and Settings

#4 - We Start INKING in Illustrator!

#5 - How to Use Shapes & Ellipse Tool

#7 - Working With Reshape Tool and Layers

#8 - Arrange, Transform, Reflect in Action #9 - Picking Up The Pace

#11 - Illustrator Inking Finale
#12 - Exporting To Photoshop

smaller YouTube version below:

...and of course the completed Nick Mag cover art is at:

Click on image - BIG video will open in new window

I know a lot of you are eager to get to all of the fun color stuff, but there's a few important details that we have to cover in order to make the coloring process work smoothly.

It's time to get our finished inked drawing out of Adobe Illustrator, and into Adobe Photoshop. All of the line work is going to get colored in Photoshop, and everything else will be painted in ArtRage.

Exporting artwork from Adobe Illustrator to Photoshop is pretty quick and easy, but there are a few choices you need to make to ensure a smooth transition.

Adobe Illustrator images are infinitely scalable -- in other words, they look perfectly smooth no matter how big you blow them up.

When you convert those drawings into Photoshop, you need to decide what the resolution will be, because Photoshop is a raster-based program; it sees drawings as a collection of individual pixels (pixel = "picture element") rather than mathematical vectors.

If the resolution is too low, the drawing will look bad when it gets blown up. If the resolution is too high, the file size will become too big to work with. I find that 300 ppi (pixels per inch) is a happy medium.

If you want to keep your layers separated, make sure to export to the Photoshop format. There's also a checkbox that appears during the conversion process which will ask you if you want to preserve the layers.

Finally, one of the most important options is whether or not to use antialiasing. When a smooth vector drawing gets converted to a bitmap/raster-based program like Photoshop, you may want to have the edges smoothed out to give your line work a softer edge. Antialiasing is not a good choice when coloring cartoon and comic book style line work.

Say "no" to anti-aliasing.

Just say no.

The next two Photoshop tutorial videos will be showing all the step by step techniques I use to digitally color line art in Photoshop!

It's gonna be quick and easy, and I'll show you all my oddball shortcuts!

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If you're just joining us,

here is the COMPLETE list of all eleven

Adobe Illustrator Cartoon Inking
tutorial videos:

#2 - Palette Options and Settings

#4 - We Start INKING in Illustrator!

#5 - How to Use Shapes & Ellipse Tool

#7 - Working With Reshape Tool and Layers

#8 - Arrange, Transform, Reflect in Action
#9 - Picking Up The Pace

#11 - Illustrator Inking Finale

Here is the YouTube version if you have trouble viewing the BIG high-resolution video at the top of the page...