adding line thickness without losing line quality

[JellevdVegt]

Hey CA peoplez,


I have a little question. Lately i've drawn alot traditional, as in with pen and markers. Now im gettnig back to photoshop and i like to get these nice lines you can get with pen. I mean, using the brush tool and going over a line a couple of times really destroys the line somehow. It seems photoshop is bad in adding line weights. Some people recommend me alias sketchbook but i dont like that program and its less controllable.

Any tips?

cheers

[Anid Maro]

From what I understand, there should be a brush setting for tablets that increase or decrease the thickness of a brush stroke according to how much pressure you're placing on the tablet pen. That should give some emulation of pen strokes.

If you intend to go over the line a few times, working at a larger scale and using the pencil tool instead of the brush (pencil isn't anti-aliased) could work. Once you downsize the image your multiple strokes should coalesce into a single line.

Also, playing with lines tends to be more of a vector thing than a raster thing. You could try out vector programs like Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator for linework, and then export the image over to Photoshop for any other work you'd like to do.

Finally, there's the option of drawing traditionally and then scanning the drawing in. I've heard many a tale of artists who do so because they just aren't satisfied with digital methods of drawing, either they can't control the lines as well as they'd like or it takes too long for them.

[JellevdVegt]

yo anid maro,

thanks for your reply.

scaling them down idea: i dont like the idea of losing image quality.
using vector programs: naa, i like PS. And I know other people can do it in PS.
drawing traditional and scanning them in: that is a good solution, but im interested in how to do it in PS.

i did some experimenting myself and found that you can get very nice lines by never pressing too hard on the tablet. First draw one light line, then another make it darker. By going over it only two times, you keep the nice flow of the line. at the moment you go over it a third time, it turns out crap.

result: