Colored line work or color holds can be used for a variety of effects. They can highlight an area or make it blend in more with the coloring, or make a background element fade away and leave just the foreground in the spotlight. Color holds are very easy to do and can really punch up your illustration!
You will need line work done on a transparent layer, as shown in the following screenshot:
Tip
The preceding image is a scanned ink drawing, with the white from the paper taken out. Manga Studio 5 can remove the white automatically with just the push of a button, and here's how! Open your scanned drawing in Manga Studio 5. If needed, adjust the brightness and contrast to make the inked lines in the scan stand out sharply from the paper color. This will also make the conversion much cleaner. Then, go to Edit | Convert brightness to opacity. Manga Studio will make the brightest areas transparent and the darkest areas opaque.
Let's make some color holds with the following steps:
- In the Layer palette, click on the layer with the inked lines to select it. When it's selected, it will turn blue.
- Click on the Lock Transparent Pixel icon, located above the list of layers. It is shown in this screenshot:
- Select your preferred pen or brush tool.
- Then, select the color you wish to paint your line art with.
- Use the pen or brush over the inked lines to change the color to the active color.
When we lock the transparent pixels of the drawing, we prevent Manga Studio from altering any pixels that are not transparent in that layer. In this case, all our ink lines are opaque, so we can only change them. Check out the following screenshot, and note that even though the hot pink scribble was made wildly, it appears on the black ink lines only:
This allows us to use pens, brushes, or even the gradient tool to color our lines. Here is a drawing in which the line layer had a rainbow gradient applied:
The following is another drawing with more subtle Color Holds, this time in the hair and on the face and lips to make some of the lines less "in your face":
