How to color the lines in your line art in CSP, Photoshop, & Procreate

In this video, I'll explain how to create "color holds" or "knockouts" -- what the comics industry calls coloring the lines. I've been using them a lot in my digital colors lately, so it's time to show you... finally!

0:40 How to color the lines in Photoshop
4:57 How to color the lines in Clip Studio Paint
5:57 How to color the lines in Procreate

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[colorwithkurt]

0:40 How to color the lines in Photoshop
4:57 How to color the lines in Clip Studio Paint
5:57 How to color the lines in Procreate


Thanks for watching!

[danielsc]

Mann, you are AWESOME for teaching us these techiniques. Love the content and clear/thorough mode in which you deliver your info in. Thank you, Kurt! 🙏

[allydrawsthings]

Holy heck. I’ve been in procreate for like 4 years and never knew how to separate inks. Just blew my mind

[sanjapetrashek]

Heya, great tutorial as always. For anyone using Clip Studio you can also press the “lock transport pixels” button on the ink layer. This is the lock over a square button by the mask button. They you can paint over your lines.

[TheDeathclawhunter]

ive been following your videos for a years and you never cease to up my game some how. i had no idea what that tool in CSP did and i now im gonna use it in all my work!!! you are the man!!

[riccrocc]

Absolutely love your tutorials!...very easy to learn you speak clearly and right to the point!..Thank you!💯💯

[ivansivakART]

I had no idea I can do that in Procreate! Thank you!

[johncollado]

Hi Kurt.... thanks for including Clip Studio in this one, it is my favorite go to application when I paint. I don't see any faster way to do it than the way you did it. Thanks again, really enjoy your channel.

[Fugazity]

how you do it is very sophisticated, maybe better than how i do it, I simply color the line with the brush tool in lighten mode, i do play with the opacity though.

[Shadwchasers]

Procreate seems to start at 5:37 rather than 5:57... but THANK YOU! I never knew I could pull black line art from a white background if they were stuck on the same layer with Procreate!!!

[felipefernandes]

Hi Kurt! I'm here just to say i watched a bunch of your videos and they are great! Thanks for sharing these skills with us...your job and the way you teach are so good. Thank you

[JoeArchey]

Thanks for making this! I’ve been looking for a video on this for a while now. Great vids.

[RodrigoOtaguro]

Nice tips Michal, in Photoshop what I normally do is, I select the line art and them I press CTRL+U and change the HUE bar, so that I can change the line color as well!

[ZethKeeper]

4:05 Actually, there is =) But you need precise flats for this, and I don't know if you can do it elsewhere besides PS. You can select the area you want and then go to Selection -> Contract (or Selection -> Expand, depending on the situation) and contract it by a few pixels. Usually the number is 3 to 5, and you've got yourself a nice selection precisely around the lines you want to color holds and not the ones you don't want to hold. All you have to do is a little bit of cleanup in some places, but even that may be not really necessary in some cases.

This method works for me, but again, you need to invest some extra time on the flatting stage. I think it saves time in the long term.

[jonamino]

Man, I really like your videos and tutoriales. I'd really like to improve my coloring skills, it's fun!

[EduardoGiunta]

0 DISLIKES, CONGRATS MY FRIEND! YOU VE DONE IT!

[HDMe]

From a work division standpoint... who would normally do this... the flatter or the colorist? I ask from personal experience, as I flatted a cover a couple of years back where I knew based on color reference provided that the outline of a character was likely to be changed from black to light-blue... but I left that for the colorist and only did the work between the lines. I made a specific note that I hadn't done that bit to make sure it wasn't missed, but it otherwise never came up in conversation as to whether I should have done it or not. My gut instinct says that as the flatter not making final color decisions it was something best left to the colorist since, as you say, there are a bunch of different ways to do it and he might want it done a specific way that he prefers. In some cases it might just be an effect and not a requirement, so only the colorist would be making those calls... this was just a rare case where the character design itself called for it because the character was dark black, which necessitated the line art being altered. In my flatting work I just backed off the black fill enough so that you could still see/easily select the line art that needed to be changed in the final stage.

[Rustyblackleford]

This maybe a silly question, but I am trying to diversify my skills. So, if I can make the line art a different color, can/do I need to use flats then? Can you go straight to coloring after this? Or do I still use flats? And do I put them below the line-art? I am a little new and just wanted to reach out.

[newlenmedia]

Why is it necessary to get the inked lines out of Channels when I already have an inks layer I can just duplicate? Is there a specific reason for this?

[torontocommission]

In Procreate if you download a color page from someone else will that invert trick also work?