Hi everyone!

I'd like to share 8 little tools with you that I find immensely useful when dealing with sketches, coloring b/w photos, editing the color of photos or old artwork of which I don't have a psd file anymore.

This pack contains the actions:

* Lineart Separation
* Redaway --- (affects red and magenta)
* Greenaway --- (affects green and yellow)
* Bluaway --- (affects blue and cyan)
* All Color to White
* Strengthen Sketch
* Create Decal
* Strengthen Decal

To install these, just open them with Photoshop.
To use actions in PS, go to window -> actions

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Here are some of the things you can do with this:

First, note: If anything you try doesn't look good for your particular picture, press F12 to revert all changes you have made since opening it. This is a standard PS command and quite useful for testing around with these actions.

1. Sketches:

Lets say you have scribbled something into your sketchbook, first using a colored pencil for the rough idea, then a dark pencil or so for clean(er) lineart. Now, scan the page and put it into PS. Use the appropriate "-away" or the "All Color to White" action to kill the colored lines and leave only your lineart.

Did your scanner mess up so that your pencil lines are far too light? Use "Strengthen Sketch" to fix this. It brightens and increases the contrast of your picture.

Lastly, use "Lineart Separation". This will take your picture and strip it of white, then put it on a transparent layer. The transparent pixels on this layer will be locked, so that you can color over it to change the color of your lines, if you wish.
(Note: Your picture should be on the standard "background" layer. If not, this action will hiccup. Just press "continue" and it'll still work.)

You can now color your picture on the white layer underneath.

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2. Recolor old Artwork or a Photo

Put your colored artwork/Photo into PS. You now have several options:

A. Use "Lineart Separation".
This will produce a partially transparent layer that you can now color on the white layer underneath. This also works well for b/w photos.

B. Use "All Color to White" and then "Lineart Separation".
This will produce the same as A, but all the highlighted areas will be much lighter, therefore preserving them. Most of the time, you'll end up with a light gray picture, which is often better to color. If the initial picture is very light, then this may turn out far too light in the end. In this case, choose A.

C. Use "Create Decal".
Again, this will produce the same as A, but with color! I like to think of it as a window decal. The picture will be lighter and have weaker colors than the original. You can now shade/complement it with colors on the white layer underneath.

I find this a MUCH better choice than simply making a new layer and setting it to overlay. If you do that, you paint over all the pixels of the original picture. If, however, you use C, you will color beneath the decal and the color will shine through its pixels - those that are more transparent will be affected more. This means that the effect is more subtle and varies from place to place.

If you find the decal to light, that is, if the pixels are too transparent, use "Strengthen Decal" to make them less transparent. Using it over and over again will make the decal more and more like the original.

D. Use one of the "-away" actions and then "Create Decal".
With the first action, you can kill specific color-ranges. Sometimes, just using one of them can give a picture an interesting new look. If you make a decal after using "-away", the specific areas won't have color.


Well, that's all for now. I hope this helps you as much as it helps me

Aaaaaaand...action(s)!